CVE-2022-37660

A flaw was found in hostapd. This vulnerability allows an attacker to subvert future PKEX associations via passive observation and reuse of public key exchange elements.

This vulnerability marked as important severity rather than moderate because it enables an attacker with prior PKEX bootstrapping knowledge to passively extract the ephemeral public key (X) from a subsequent exchange, effectively bypassing authentication and subverting the DPP onboarding process. Unlike a moderate vulnerability, which typically requires active exploitation or additional preconditions, this attack is low-interaction and stealthy, requiring only passive observation of a legitimate exchange. Furthermore, since PKEX is designed for out-of-band authentication in secure provisioning scenarios, its compromise undermines the integrity of device onboarding, potentially leading to unauthorized network access or man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.