CVE-2023-45866
Published: 08 December 2023
Summary
CVE-2023-45866 is a medium-severity Improper Authentication (CWE-287) vulnerability in Google Android. Its CVSS base score is 6.3 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked in the top 2.8% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
Deeper analysis
BlueZ Bluetooth HID Hosts permit an unauthenticated peripheral HID device to establish an encrypted connection and deliver keyboard reports to the central host without prior user authorization. The flaw stems from insufficient authentication checks in the HID profile and affects implementations such as bluez 5.64-0ubuntu1 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, as well as other distributions shipping similar BlueZ versions; the issue is tracked under CWE-287 and carries a CVSS 3.1 score of 6.3.
An attacker in Bluetooth radio range can present a malicious HID peripheral that initiates pairing and injects keystroke reports directly into the host, achieving limited read, write, and availability impact on the target system without any interactive confirmation from the central device user. In some environments the earlier mitigation for CVE-2020-0556 already blocks the same vector.
Advisories reference the upstream BlueZ commit that hardens the input profile, Ubuntu changelog entries documenting the package update, and public disclosure threads that recommend applying the patched BlueZ release or confirming the presence of prior mitigations. The EPSS score has remained near its observed peak of 0.3655 with no material post-disclosure climb from a low baseline.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-50132
Vulnerability details
Bluetooth HID Hosts in BlueZ may permit an unauthenticated Peripheral role HID Device to initiate and establish an encrypted connection, and accept HID keyboard reports, potentially permitting injection of HID messages when no user interaction has occurred in the Central…
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role to authorize such access. An example affected package is bluez 5.64-0ubuntu1 in Ubuntu 22.04LTS. NOTE: in some cases, a CVE-2020-0556 mitigation would have already addressed this Bluetooth HID Hosts issue.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Detects unauthorized successful logons resulting from improper authentication implementations.
Documented procedures ensure personnel are trained on authentication mechanisms, tangibly lowering the risk of improper authentication being exploited.
Security awareness training instructs users on secure authentication practices and avoiding credential compromise.
Training on authentication mechanisms and best practices decreases the occurrence of improper authentication.
Non-repudiation requires strong authentication mechanisms to irrefutably attribute performed actions to specific individuals or processes.
Session content review can reveal authentication bypasses or failures in session establishment.
Review of authentication-related audit records can detect improper authentication mechanisms or bypasses.
Assessments check authentication mechanisms for correct implementation and effectiveness, reducing successful authentication bypass attempts.