The vulnerability affects the KeePass 2.X branch for Windows, and possibly for Linux and macOS. It has been fixed in the test versions of KeePass v2.54 – the official release is expected by July 2023. It’s unfortunate that the PoC tool is already publicly available and the release of the new version so far off, but the risk of CVE-2023-32784 being abused in the wild is likely to be pretty low, according to the researcher.

  • @Hirom@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    511 months ago

    There are multiple local attacker / evil maid scenarios, each require different counter-measures:

    • Attacker with access to the system memory while the DB is unlocked, ie prior undetected compromise.
    • Attacker with access to the system memory after the DB is locked, ie stealing a powered-on machine with a locked manager.
    • Attacker with access to the system hibernation/swap file, ie stealing a power-down machine.

    You’re focusing on the scenario #1, but the blog post allege KeePass is be vulnerable to all 3 attack scenarios. No password manager is resistant to #1 to my knowledge.

    KeePassXC is at least partially resistant to #2 on a best-effort basis. Where possible, they use a custom allocator that zeros memory. The recent audit claim no username/password/passphrase was found in the memory dump after locking, but some metadata/notes were found. I think pass is resistant to #2 because it’s a short-live process that unlocks & obtain-the-pass & exit immediately.

    IMHO #1 is a non-issue, #2 is a low-severity issue, and #3 is a medium-to-high-severity issue. Operating Systems have API programs can use to declare allocated memory as being non-swappable, which password managers should be leveraging to protect against #3. So being vulnerable to #3 is bad.

    • True, all true. The KeePassXC auditor was able to get metadata and notes (which dismayed them, as there was no indication that notes were not encrypted) from a dump after DB lock.

      Good points!