Security Resilience

CVE-2023-52955

Auth Bypass in Huawei Harmonyos 2.0.0 … 3.1.0

Published
08 January 2025
Modified
13 January 2025
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 6.5
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0024 14th percentile
Risk Priority 49 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

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, ranked at the 14th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to IA-2 (Identification and Authentication (Organizational Users)) and IA-3 (Device Identification and Authentication) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary

Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.

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.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

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

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2023-39380Same product: Huawei Emui
CVE-2024-5465Same product: Huawei Emui
CVE-2023-7265Same product: Huawei Emui
CVE-2023-39394Same product: Huawei Emui
CVE-2024-45442Same product: Huawei Emui
CVE-2024-39670Same product: Huawei Emui
CVE-2023-39391Same product: Huawei Emui
CVE-2024-42038Same product: Huawei Emui
CVE-2023-39406Same product: Huawei Emui
CVE-2024-45449Same product: Huawei Emui

Affected Assets

huawei
emui
12.0.0, 13.0.0
huawei
harmonyos
2.0.0, 2.1.0, 3.0.0, 3.1.0

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Mandates unique identification and authentication of organizational users before access, directly stopping improper authentication.

Requires unique identification and authentication of devices before establishing connections, preventing unauthenticated device claims.

Mandates unique identification and authentication of non-organizational users, directly addressing the weakness for external actors.

Manages authenticators with verification and secure distribution, reducing opportunities for improper authentication.

Enforces access only after approved authorizations, which presupposes correct authentication has occurred.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

blocks

Mandating segregated approval and oversight for non-human identities reduces the chance that weak or orphaned credentials can be exploited for unauthorized authentication.

blocks

A.5.17 directly mandates generation of non-guessable unique secrets, secure transmission, immediate change of defaults/temporary creds, strong password enforcement, no-reuse, and compromise response, which stops most improper-authentication exploits at source; the bounded remainder is non-password authentication methods and sufficiency-of-proof cases (e.g. IA-2/IA-5 enhancements) left to other controls.

blocks

Security requirements specified early and verified through testing drive the consistent implementation of authentication mechanisms, decreasing the likelihood that authentication steps are omitted or incorrectly applied.

blocks

A.8.26 explicitly requires identifying and addressing authentication-related requirements (including level of trust in identity via 8.5 and 5.17) as part of application development or acquisition, which prevents a slice of CWE-287 but leaves the dominant sufficiency-of-proof aspects (IA-2/IA-5) and many implementation defects untouched.

blocks

A.8.27 mandates security-by-design principles (least privilege, default-deny, never-trust/always-verify, MFA, end-to-end encryption of requests, distrust-external-input, secure session control, and explicit authentication/authorization in every layer), which directly stops most improper-authentication flaws from being exploitable; the bounded remainder is insufficient-proof cases that live only in the strength or correctness of the credential itself (IA-5/IA-2 territory).

blocks

A.8.5 directly mandates appropriate-strength authentication techniques, MFA for critical systems, protected log-on procedures, brute-force resistance, no cleartext passwords/transmission, and session controls that stop exploitation of insufficient proof of identity; the bounded remainder is cases where the chosen technique itself is flawed or insufficiently implemented (e.g. weak biometrics without fallback).

Hardening callouts derived

DISA STIG baselines are authored against specific weaknesses. Where this CVE cites a broad weakness class, the mapping is not asserted at that abstraction (owner ruling, 2026-09-25: grade only at Base and below), so no rule is shown here rather than a rule shown against the wrong grain.

  • No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-287, a class-level weakness. Rules are authored against its narrower children: CWE-295, CWE-306.

References