CVE-2023-37920: Certifi Root Certificate Trust Vulnerability

CVE-2023-37920 Overview

Certifi is a curated collection of Root Certificates for validating the trustworthiness of SSL certificates while verifying the identity of TLS hosts. Certifi prior to version 2023.07.22 recognized "e-Tugra" root certificates. These certificates were subject to an investigation prompted by security issues in their systems. Certifi 2023.07.22 removes these "e-Tugra" root certificates from the root store.

Critical Impact

This vulnerability impacts the integrity of SSL validations by trusting certificates that might be compromised.

Affected Products

• Certifi Certifi
• Fedoraproject Fedora
• Netapp Active IQ Unified Manager

Discovery Timeline

• Not Available - Vulnerability discovered by Not Available
• Not Available - Responsible disclosure to Certifi
• Not Available - CVE CVE-2023-37920 assigned
• Not Available - Certifi releases security patch
• 2023-07-25T21:15:10.827 - CVE CVE-2023-37920 published to NVD
• 2025-02-13T13:50:15.813 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2023-37920

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability stems from the inclusion of "e-Tugra" root certificates in the Certifi root store, which were found to be untrustworthy due to security lapses.

Root Cause

The untrustworthy "e-Tugra" root certificates compromised the security of SSL validations.

Attack Vector

Network

# Example exploitation code (sanitized)
def check_certificate_validity(certificate):
    validated = trust_store.validate(certificate)
    if not validated:
        raise ValueError("Certificate validation failed")
# After the patch: ensure 'e-Tugra' certificates are not trusted
trust_store.remove_root("e-Tugra")

Detection Methods for CVE-2023-37920

Indicators of Compromise

• Trust failures for SSL connections
• Logs showing untrusted "e-Tugra" certificate usage
• Alerts from security monitoring systems

Detection Strategies

Implement monitoring scripts to alert on SSL trust failures related to "e-Tugra" certificates.

Monitoring Recommendations

Utilize SentinelOne’s advanced threat detection capabilities which will help identify and alert any anomalies involving untrusted certificates in the network traffic.

How to Mitigate CVE-2023-37920

Immediate Actions Required

• Remove "e-Tugra" root certificates manually if not using the latest Certifi update.
• Update Certifi to version 2023.07.22 or later.
• Perform a full audit of trusted root certificates in your environment.

Patch Information

Apply the update available at: Certifi Patch

Workarounds

Manually edit the list of root certificates in your environment and remove any "e-Tugra" certificates.

# Configuration example
grep -v "e-Tugra" /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt > /etc/ssl/certs/new-ca-certificates.crt
mv /etc/ssl/certs/new-ca-certificates.crt /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt