Monero GUI and CLI Update: ‘Oxygen Orion’

The Monero Project released an update to its CLI and GUI software that updates OpenSSl and provides “P2P network layer improvements.”

The GUI release, aside from containing network layer improvements, is a fairly minor update with 16 commits and 51 lines of code. A list of highlights include:

• Ask for writing desktop shortcut on first start (Linux)
• Fix wallet initialization flag handling
• Get back “Sending transaction …” splash
• Disable QML cache
• Minor bug fixes

The CLI update had 24 commits containing 154 lines of new code. Some of the highlights of the update include:

• P2P: include first new block in chain entry response
• P2P: more restrictive checks on chain entry response
• Fix syncing with –sync-pruned-blocks flag
• Update OpenSSL to 1.1.1i to fix its recently disclosed vulnerability

Both updates are available on the getmonero.org download page: getmonero.org/downloads

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The recently disclosed OpenSSL vulnerability:

EDIPARTYNAME NULL pointer de-reference (CVE-2020-1971)
======================================================

Severity: High

The X.509 GeneralName type is a generic type for representing different types
of names. One of those name types is known as EDIPartyName. OpenSSL provides a
function GENERAL_NAME_cmp which compares different instances of a GENERAL_NAME
to see if they are equal or not. This function behaves incorrectly when both
GENERAL_NAMEs contain an EDIPARTYNAME. A NULL pointer dereference and a crash
may occur leading to a possible denial of service attack.

OpenSSL itself uses the GENERAL_NAME_cmp function for two purposes:
1) Comparing CRL distribution point names between an available CRL and a CRL
   distribution point embedded in an X509 certificate
2) When verifying that a timestamp response token signer matches the timestamp
   authority name (exposed via the API functions TS_RESP_verify_response and
   TS_RESP_verify_token)

If an attacker can control both items being compared then that attacker could
trigger a crash. For example if the attacker can trick a client or server into
checking a malicious certificate against a malicious CRL then this may occur.
Note that some applications automatically download CRLs based on a URL embedded
in a certificate. This checking happens prior to the signatures on the
certificate and CRL being verified. OpenSSL's s_server, s_client and verify
tools have support for the "-crl_download" option which implements automatic
CRL downloading and this attack has been demonstrated to work against those
tools.