Security Bulletin: A security vulnerability has been identified in GSKit shipped with IBM Spectrum Scale V4 (CVE-2016-2183)

Summary

A security vulnerability has been identified in one of the cipher suites supported by GSKit

Vulnerability Details

CVEID: CVE-2016-2183 DESCRIPTION: OpenSSL could allow a remote attacker to obtain sensitive information, caused by an error in the in the Triple-DES on 64-bit block cipher, used as a part of the SSL/TLS protocol. By capturing large amounts of encrypted traffic between the SSL/TLS server and the client, a remote attacker able to conduct a man-in-the-middle attack could exploit this vulnerability to recover the plaintext data and obtain sensitive information. This vulnerability is known as the SWEET32 Birthday attack.
CVSS Base Score: 3.7
CVSS Temporal Score: See https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/116337 for the current score
CVSS Environmental Score*: Undefined
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N)

Affected Products and Versions

IBM Spectrum Scale V4.2

IBM Spectrum Scale V4.1

Remediation/Fixes

None

Workarounds and Mitigations

Ensure you are utilizing a cipher supported by IBM Spectrum Scale (GPFS).

IBM Spectrum Scale V4:

For environments where nistCompliance=off

• AES128-SHA
• AES256-SHA

For environments where nistCompliance=SP800-131A

• AES128-SHA
• AES128-SHA256
• AES256-SHA
• AES256-SHA256

In addition, IBM Spectrum Scale supports the keywords DEFAULT andAUTHONLY. WhenAUTHONLYis specified in place of a cipher list, Spectrum Scale checks network connection authorization. However, data sent over the connection is not protected. WhenDEFAULT is specified, Spectrum Scale does not authenticate or check authorization for network connections.

Note:

1. When different versions of OpenSSL are used within a cluster or in a multi-cluster setup, and when a cluster contains both V3 and V4 nodes, ensure that the ciphers are supported by all nodes. For GPFS V3:

• AES128-SHA
• AES256-SHA

2. Starting with V4.2, newly created clusters have cipherList set to AUTHONLY.
3. AUTHONLY is not affected by CVE-2016-2183