CVE-2023-52955
Published: 08 January 2025
Summary
CVE-2023-52955 is a medium-severity Improper Authentication (CWE-287) vulnerability in Huawei Harmonyos. Its CVSS base score is 6.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 26.6th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and IA-9 (Service Identification and Authentication).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2023-52955 is a vulnerability involving improper authentication in the ANS system service module. This flaw affects Huawei consumer products, as indicated by the vendor's security bulletin. Assigned a CVSS v3.1 base score of 6.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H), it maps to CWE-264 (Permissions, Privileges, and Access Control) and CWE-287 (Improper Authentication). Successful exploitation may cause features to perform abnormally, primarily impacting availability.
A remote attacker with network access can exploit this vulnerability with low complexity and no required privileges, though user interaction is necessary, such as tricking a user into performing a specific action. The attack has an unchanged scope and results in high availability disruption without affecting confidentiality or integrity, effectively enabling a denial-of-service condition that disrupts normal feature operation.
Huawei has published a security bulletin addressing this issue at https://consumer.huawei.com/en/support/bulletin/2025/1/, which provides further details for affected users and practitioners.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-59442
Vulnerability details
Vulnerability of improper authentication in the ANS system service module Impact: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may cause features to perform abnormally.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Improper authentication in network-accessible system service directly enables remote exploitation leading to application/system crash and DoS (high availability impact).
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Requires identification and authentication of system services such as the ANS module, directly addressing the improper authentication vulnerability that enables denial-of-service exploitation.
Enforces approved authorizations for access to system resources in the ANS service module, preventing unauthorized actions that cause abnormal feature performance.
Mandates identification, reporting, and remediation of flaws like CVE-2023-52955's improper authentication, preventing exploitation and enabling recovery from availability disruptions.