Improper Certificate Validation in Puppet
Published: April 13, 2021
SECURITY IDENTIFIERS
- CVE: CVE-2020-7942 (NVD)
- GHSA: GHSA-gqvf-892r-vjm5
- Vendor Advisory: https://puppet.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-7942/
GEM
SEVERITY
CVSS v3.x: 6.5 (Medium)
PATCHED VERSIONS
~> 5.5.19
>= 6.13.0
DESCRIPTION
Previously, Puppet operated on a model that a node with a valid certificate
was entitled to all information in the system and that a compromised certificate
allowed access to everything in the infrastructure. When a node's catalog falls
back to the default node, the catalog can be retrieved for a different node by
modifying facts for the Puppet run. This issue can be mitigated by setting
strict_hostname_checking = true in puppet.conf on your Puppet master. Puppet
6.13.0 changes the default behavior for strict_hostname_checking from false to
true. It is recommended that Puppet Open Source and Puppet Enterprise users that
are not upgrading still set strict_hostname_checking to true to ensure secure
behavior.
