Wget: Certificate validation error

Background

GNU Wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols.

Description

The vendor reported that Wget does not properly handle Common Name (CN) fields in X.509 certificates that contain an ASCII NUL (\0) character. Specifically, the processing of such fields is stopped at the first occurrence of a NUL character. This type of vulnerability was recently discovered by Dan Kaminsky and Moxie Marlinspike.

Impact

A remote attacker might employ a specially crafted X.509 certificate, containing a NUL character in the Common Name field to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks on SSL connections made using Wget.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Wget users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-misc/wget-1.12"