Komodia Redirector with SSL Digestor fails to properly validate SSL and installs non-unique root CA certificates and private keys

Komodia Redirector with SSL Digestor installs non-unique root CA certificates and private keys, making systems broadly vulnerable to HTTPS spoofing

Description

Komodia Redirector SDK is a self-described "interception engine" designed to enable developers to integrate proxy services and web traffic modification (such as ad injection) into their applications. With the SSL Digestor module, HTTPS traffic can also be manipulated. This is accomplished by installing a root CA certificate into browser trusted certificate stores, enabling the proxy to effectively man-in-the-middle all web traffic without raising any flags for the end-user. In multiple applications implementing Komodia's libraries, such as Superfish Visual Discovery and KeepMyFamilySecure, the root CA certificates have been found to use trivially obtainable, publicly disclosed, hard-coded private keys. Note that these keys appear to be distinct per application, though the same methods have proven successful in revealing the private keys in each instance. In addition to sharing root CA certificates across installation, it has been reported that the SSL validation that Komodia itself performs is broken. This vulnerability can allow an attacker to successfully perform a MITM attack against a victim with Komodia Redirector installed without needing to host content. The attacker can simply intercept traffic to legitimate websites without the victim realizing it. Users should be aware that uninstalling affected applications is not sufficient to remove the security risk since the root certificates are not removed in the process. The Superfish removal instructions provided by Lenovo, whose consumer-grade systems come bundled with the software, describe steps users with Windows 8 can take to remove Superfish and the associated certificate from the Windows certificate store; guidance for removing the certificate from Firefox is not provided. Lenovo users can verify whether their systems contain a Superfish root certificate by visiting this site. A list of potentially affected Lenovo systems is available here.

Impact

An attacker can spoof HTTPS sites and intercept HTTPS traffic without triggering browser certificate warnings in affected systems.

Solution

The CERT/CC is currently unaware of any official solutions to this problem and recommends the following workarounds.

Uninstall Komodia Redirector SDK and associated root CA certificates Uninstall any software that includes the Komodia Redirector and SSL Digestor libraries. Refer to the Vendor Information section below for an updated list of known affected vendors. After uninstalling an offending application, it is also necessary to independently remove compromised root CA certificates. Note that the names of these certificates are likely to vary based on the originating application. Microsoft provides guidance on deleting and managing certificates in the Windows certificate store. Mozilla provides similar guidance for their software, including the Firefox and Thunderbird certificate stores.

Vendor Information (Learn More)

Vendor	Status	Date Notified	Date Updated
Atom Security, Inc	Affected	20 Feb 2015	20 Feb 2015
KeepMyFamilySecure	Affected	19 Feb 2015	20 Feb 2015
Komodia	Affected	19 Feb 2015	20 Feb 2015
Kurupira	Affected	-	20 Feb 2015
Lavasoft	Affected	20 Feb 2015	20 Feb 2015
Lenovo	Affected	19 Feb 2015	20 Feb 2015
Qustodio	Affected	19 Feb 2015	20 Feb 2015
Superfish	Affected	19 Feb 2015	20 Feb 2015
Websecure Ltd	Affected	20 Feb 2015	20 Feb 2015

If you are a vendor and your product is affected, let us know.

CVSS Metrics (Learn More)

Group	Score	Vector
Base	8.5	AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:P/A:N
Temporal	8.1	E:H/RL:W/RC:C
Environmental	8.6	CDP:LM/TD:H/CR:ND/IR:ND/AR:ND

References

• http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/02/extracting-superfish-certificate.html
• http://www.komodia.com/ad-injection-sdk/
• https://filippo.io/Badfish/
• https://blog.filippo.io/komodia-superfish-ssl-validation-is-broken/
• http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1929
• https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/Lenovo-Pre-instaling-adware-spam-Superfish-powerd-by/m-p/1863174#M79882
• https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/Removal-Instructions-for-VisualDiscovery-Superfish-application/ta-p/2029206
• http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1929&cid=ww:social:147924660:147924659:TWITTER:lenovo:*%20Customer%20Service%20and%20Support&linkId=12450493
• http://www.komodia.com/wiki/index.php/Komodia%27s_Redirector
• http://www.komodia.com/wiki/index.php/SSL_Digestor
• http://www.keepmyfamilysecure.com/about/
• http://www.komodia.com/wiki/index.php/Komodia%27s_Redirector#When_do_I_need_the_SSL_Digestor.3F
• http://marcrogers.org/2015/02/19/lenovo-installs-adware-on-customer-laptops-and-compromises-all-ssl/

Credit

The CERT/CC wishes to thank the following for their contributions to this report:

Mark Rogers, https://twitter.com/marcwrogers
Rob Graham, https://twitter.com/erratarob
Twitter user TheWack0lian https://twitter.com/TheWack0lian
Chris Palmer, https://twitter.com/fugueish
Filippo Valsorda, https://twitter.com/FiloSottile

This document was produced as a collaborative effort of the CERT/CC Vulnerability Analysis team.