Security Bulletin: Apache Commons HttpClient 3.x (and few others) allow Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack

Summary

Apache Commons HttpClient 3.x (and few others) used do not verify the server hostname in the subject Common Name (CN) and allows Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack

Vulnerability Details

CVEID:CVE-2012-5783
**DESCRIPTION:**Apache Commons HttpClient, as used in Amazon Flexible Payments Service (FPS) merchant Java SDK and other products, could allow a remote attacker to conduct spoofing attacks, caused by the failure to verify that the server hostname matches a domain name in the subject’s Common Name (CN) field of the X.509 certificate. By persuading a victim to visit a Web site containing a specially-crafted certificate, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability using man-in-the-middle techniques to spoof an SSL server.
CVSS Base score: 4.3
CVSS Temporal Score: See: https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/79984 for the current score.
CVSS Vector: (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N)

CVEID:CVE-2014-3577
**DESCRIPTION:**Apache HttpComponents could allow a remote attacker to conduct spoofing attacks, caused by the failure to verify that the server hostname matches a domain name in the Subject’s Common Name (CN) or SubjectAltName field of certificates. By persuading a victim to visit a Web site containing a specially-crafted certificate, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability using man-in-the-middle techniques to spoof an SSL server.
CVSS Base score: 4.3
CVSS Temporal Score: See: https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/95327 for the current score.
CVSS Vector: (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N)

CVEID:CVE-2012-6153
**DESCRIPTION:**Apache HttpComponents could allow a remote attacker to conduct spoofing attacks, caused by an incomplete fix related to the failure to verify that the server hostname matches a domain name in the Subject’s Common Name (CN) or SubjectAltName field of certificates. By persuading a victim to visit a Web site containing a specially-crafted certificate, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability using man-in-the-middle techniques to spoof an SSL server.
CVSS Base score: 4.3
CVSS Temporal Score: See: https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/95328 for the current score.
CVSS Vector: (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N)

CVEID:CVE-2015-5262
**DESCRIPTION:**Apache Commons is vulnerable to a denial of service, caused by the failure to apply a configured connection during the initial handshake of an HTTPS connection by the HttpClient component. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to accumulate multiple connections and exhaust all available resources.
CVSS Base score: 5.3
CVSS Temporal Score: See: https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/106932 for the current score.
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L)

Affected Products and Versions

Remediation/Fixes

To fix the vulnerability related to Apache CommonsHttpClient, an alternate package from different provider under Apache have been used.
New commons-httpclient jar will mitigate existing vulnerabilities.

Workarounds and Mitigations

New commons-httpclient jar is used from a different provider under Apache.