CVE-2025-59154 Vulnerability Analysis & Exploit Details

CVE-2025-59154
Vulnerability Scoring

5.9
/10
Significant Risk

Security assessments indicate that CVE-2025-59154 presents a notable risk, potentially requiring prompt mitigation.

Attack Complexity Details

  • Attack Complexity: High
    Exploits require significant effort and special conditions.
  • Attack Vector: Network
    Vulnerability is exploitable over a network without physical access.
  • Privileges Required: High
    High-level privileges are required for exploitation.
  • Scope: Unchanged
    Exploit remains within the originally vulnerable component.
  • User Interaction: None
    No user interaction is necessary for exploitation.

CVE-2025-59154 Details

Status: Received on 15 Sep 2025, 20:15 UTC

Published on: 15 Sep 2025, 20:15 UTC

CVSS Release: version 3

CVSS3 Source

security-advisories@github.com

CVSS3 Type

Secondary

CVSS3 Vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

CVE-2025-59154 Vulnerability Summary

CVE-2025-59154: Openfire is an XMPP server licensed under the Open Source Apache License. Openfire’s SASL EXTERNAL mechanism for client TLS authentication contains a vulnerability in how it extracts user identities from X.509 certificates. Instead of parsing the structured ASN.1 data, the code calls X509Certificate.getSubjectDN().getName() and applies a regex to look for CN=. This method produces a provider-dependent string that does not escape special characters. In SunJSSE (sun.security.x509.X500Name), for example, commas and equals signs inside attribute values are not escaped. As a result, a malicious certificate can embed CN= inside another attribute value (e.g. OU="CN=admin,"). The regex will incorrectly interpret this as a legitimate Common Name and extract admin. If SASL EXTERNAL is enabled and configured to map CNs to user accounts, this allows the attacker to impersonate another user. The fix is included in Openfire 5.0.2 and 5.1.0.

Assessing the Risk of CVE-2025-59154

Access Complexity Graph

The exploitability of CVE-2025-59154 depends on two key factors: attack complexity (the level of effort required to execute an exploit) and privileges required (the access level an attacker needs).

Exploitability Analysis for CVE-2025-59154

The exploitability of CVE-2025-59154 is influenced by multiple factors. Security teams should analyze system configurations and apply appropriate countermeasures to mitigate threats.

Understanding AC and PR

A lower complexity and fewer privilege requirements make exploitation easier. Security teams should evaluate these aspects to determine the urgency of mitigation strategies, such as patch management and access control policies.

Attack Complexity (AC) measures the difficulty in executing an exploit. A high AC means that specific conditions must be met, making an attack more challenging, while a low AC means the vulnerability can be exploited with minimal effort.

Privileges Required (PR) determine the level of system access necessary for an attack. Vulnerabilities requiring no privileges are more accessible to attackers, whereas high privilege requirements limit exploitation to authorized users with elevated access.

CVSS Score Breakdown Chart

Above is the CVSS Sub-score Breakdown for CVE-2025-59154, illustrating how Base, Impact, and Exploitability factors combine to form the overall severity rating. A higher sub-score typically indicates a more severe or easier-to-exploit vulnerability.

CIA Impact Analysis

Below is the Impact Analysis for CVE-2025-59154, showing how Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability might be affected if the vulnerability is exploited. Higher values usually signal greater potential damage.

  • Confidentiality: High
    Exploiting CVE-2025-59154 can result in unauthorized access to sensitive data, severely compromising data privacy.
  • Integrity: High
    CVE-2025-59154 could allow unauthorized modifications to data, potentially affecting system reliability and trust.
  • Availability: None
    CVE-2025-59154 does not impact system availability.

CVE-2025-59154 References

External References

CWE Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-290

CAPEC Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification

  • Exploitation of Trusted Identifiers CAPEC-21 An adversary guesses, obtains, or "rides" a trusted identifier (e.g. session ID, resource ID, cookie, etc.) to perform authorized actions under the guise of an authenticated user or service.
  • Exploiting Trust in Client CAPEC-22 An attack of this type exploits vulnerabilities in client/server communication channel authentication and data integrity. It leverages the implicit trust a server places in the client, or more importantly, that which the server believes is the client. An attacker executes this type of attack by communicating directly with the server where the server believes it is communicating only with a valid client. There are numerous variations of this type of attack.
  • Creating a Rogue Certification Authority Certificate CAPEC-459 An adversary exploits a weakness resulting from using a hashing algorithm with weak collision resistance to generate certificate signing requests (CSR) that contain collision blocks in their "to be signed" parts. The adversary submits one CSR to be signed by a trusted certificate authority then uses the signed blob to make a second certificate appear signed by said certificate authority. Due to the hash collision, both certificates, though different, hash to the same value and so the signed blob works just as well in the second certificate. The net effect is that the adversary's second X.509 certificate, which the Certification Authority has never seen, is now signed and validated by that Certification Authority.
  • Web Services API Signature Forgery Leveraging Hash Function Extension Weakness CAPEC-461 An adversary utilizes a hash function extension/padding weakness, to modify the parameters passed to the web service requesting authentication by generating their own call in order to generate a legitimate signature hash (as described in the notes), without knowledge of the secret token sometimes provided by the web service.
  • Signature Spoof CAPEC-473 An attacker generates a message or datablock that causes the recipient to believe that the message or datablock was generated and cryptographically signed by an authoritative or reputable source, misleading a victim or victim operating system into performing malicious actions.
  • Signature Spoofing by Misrepresentation CAPEC-476 An attacker exploits a weakness in the parsing or display code of the recipient software to generate a data blob containing a supposedly valid signature, but the signer's identity is falsely represented, which can lead to the attacker manipulating the recipient software or its victim user to perform compromising actions.
  • Session Credential Falsification through Prediction CAPEC-59 This attack targets predictable session ID in order to gain privileges. The attacker can predict the session ID used during a transaction to perform spoofing and session hijacking.
  • Reusing Session IDs (aka Session Replay) CAPEC-60 This attack targets the reuse of valid session ID to spoof the target system in order to gain privileges. The attacker tries to reuse a stolen session ID used previously during a transaction to perform spoofing and session hijacking. Another name for this type of attack is Session Replay.
  • Bluetooth Impersonation AttackS (BIAS) CAPEC-667 An adversary disguises the MAC address of their Bluetooth enabled device to one for which there exists an active and trusted connection and authenticates successfully. The adversary can then perform malicious actions on the target Bluetooth device depending on the target’s capabilities.
  • Adversary in the Middle (AiTM) CAPEC-94 An adversary targets the communication between two components (typically client and server), in order to alter or obtain data from transactions. A general approach entails the adversary placing themself within the communication channel between the two components.

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