Oracle Database Weak NNE Integrity Key Derivation Vulnerability

Product:                   Database
Manufacturer:              Oracle
Affected Version(s):       12.1.0.2, 12.2.0.1, 19c
Tested Version(s):         18c
Vulnerability Type:        Inadequate Encryption Strength (CWE-326)
Risk Level:                Medium
Solution Status:           Fixed
Manufacturer Notification: 2021-03-17
Solution Date:             2021-08-07
Public Disclosure:         2021-12-10
CVE Reference:             CVE-2021-2351
Author of Advisory:        Moritz Bechler, SySS GmbH

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Overview:

Oracle Database is a general purpose relational database management
system (RDMBS).

The manufacturer describes the product as follows (see [1]):

"Oracle database products offer customers cost-optimized and high-performance 
versions of Oracle Database, the world's leading converged, multi-model 
database management system, as well as in-memory, NoSQL and MySQL databases.
Oracle Autonomous Database, available on premises via Oracle Cloud@Customer 
or in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, enables customers to simplify relational 
database environments and reduce management workloads."

To protect the client/server communication, a proprietary security protocol 
"Native Network Encryption" (NNE) is used. 
A TLS-based alternative can optionally be configured.

NNE's integrity protection mechanism deliberately weakens the key used 
for computing per-packet message authentication codes (MACs). 

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Vulnerability Details:

When analyzing the protocol details, SySS found out that depending on
the selected hash algorithms, one of two key generation schemes is used.
Both are seeded with material from the established session key.
However, even for the AES-based key generator, which is used when modern 
cryptographic primitives are selected, the session key is truncated to
40 bits.

For more details on the protocol and MAC computation, refer to our
paper [4].

Brute-force cracking of that key, for example if only integrity but no 
encryption is enabled, is likely possible and allows malicious
manipulation of transmitted database commands or data.

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Proof of Concept (PoC):

The initialization of the key generator, as originally implemented, can 
be described with the following Python code, where SK is the established
session key, and the initialization vector (IV) was exchanged in
clear text during NNE negotiation. 

mk = SK[0:5] + b'\xFF' + b'\x00' * 10
self.m = AES.new(mk, AES.MODE_CBC, iv=IV[0:16])
self.ms = b'\x00'*32
self.ms = s = self.m.encrypt(self.ms)
self.m = AES.new(s[0:16], AES.MODE_CBC, iv=s[16:32])

k1 = s[0:5] + b'\xB4' + s[6:16]
self.s2c = AES.new(k1, AES.MODE_CBC, iv=s[16:32])
self.s2cs = b'\x00' * 32

k2 = s[0:5] + b'\x5A' + s[6:16]
self.c2s = AES.new(k2, AES.MODE_CBC, iv=s[16:32])
self.c2ss = b'\x00' * 32


A per-packet key "k" is then generated like

self.c2ss = k = self.c2s.encrypt(self.c2ss)

and appended to the packet data as well as hashed using the selected hash algorithm.

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Solution:

Update the Oracle Database servers and clients to the patched versions.
Enforce usage of a secured protocol version by setting the following options:

 SQLNET.ALLOW_WEAK_CRYPTO_CLIENTS=FALSE (server-side)
 SQLNET.ALLOW_WEAK_CRYPTO=FALSE (client-side)


Or use TLS-based transport security instead of Native Network Encryption.


More information:
https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpujul2021.html
https://support.oracle.com/rs?type=doc&id=2791571.1 (customer account required)

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Disclosure Timeline:

2013-03-02: Vulnerability discovered
2021-03-17: Vulnerability reported to manufacturer
2021-07-20: Initial patch release by manufacturer, 
2021-08-07: Final patches released by manufacturer
2021-12-10: Public disclosure of vulnerability