CVE-2025-59154

Openfire allows potential identity spoofing via unsafe CN parsing

Published Sep 15, 2025 CVSS 3.1 · 5.9 Medium EPSS < 1% KEV · Not listed
Description
Openfire is an XMPP server licensed under the Open Source Apache License. Openfire’s SASL EXTERNAL mechanism for client TLS authentication contains a vulnerability in how it extracts user identities from X.509 certificates. Instead of parsing the structured ASN.1 data, the code calls X509Certificate.getSubjectDN().getName() and applies a regex to look for CN=. This method produces a provider-dependent string that does not escape special characters. In SunJSSE (sun.security.x509.X500Name), for example, commas and equals signs inside attribute values are not escaped. As a result, a malicious certificate can embed CN= inside another attribute value (e.g. OU="CN=admin,"). The regex will incorrectly interpret this as a legitimate Common Name and extract admin. If SASL EXTERNAL is enabled and configured to map CNs to user accounts, this allows the attacker to impersonate another user. The fix is included in Openfire 5.0.2 and 5.1.0.

Remediation

No solution or workaround provided in the CVE record

Tracking

Sign in to view the affected projects.

Advisories

Source ID Title
EUVD EUVD EUVD-2025-29235 Openfire has potential identity spoofing issue via unsafe CN parsing
Github GHSA Github GHSA GHSA-w252-645g-87mp Openfire has potential identity spoofing issue via unsafe CN parsing
History
Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Igniterealtime
Igniterealtime openfire
Vendors & Products Igniterealtime
Igniterealtime openfire
Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Openfire is an XMPP server licensed under the Open Source Apache License. Openfire’s SASL EXTERNAL mechanism for client TLS authentication contains a vulnerability in how it extracts user identities from X.509 certificates. Instead of parsing the structured ASN.1 data, the code calls X509Certificate.getSubjectDN().getName() and applies a regex to look for CN=. This method produces a provider-dependent string that does not escape special characters. In SunJSSE (sun.security.x509.X500Name), for example, commas and equals signs inside attribute values are not escaped. As a result, a malicious certificate can embed CN= inside another attribute value (e.g. OU="CN=admin,"). The regex will incorrectly interpret this as a legitimate Common Name and extract admin. If SASL EXTERNAL is enabled and configured to map CNs to user accounts, this allows the attacker to impersonate another user. The fix is included in Openfire 5.0.2 and 5.1.0.
Title Openfire allows potential identity spoofing via unsafe CN parsing
Weaknesses CWE-290
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 5.9, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N'}

ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
GitHub_M
Published
Updated
Sep 15, 2025, 8:11 PM
Reserved
Sep 9, 2025, 3:23 PM
Status
Deferred
Published
Sep 15, 2025, 8:15 PM
Modified
Jun 17, 2026, 9:45 AM