CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2019-18659 — Ready Wireless Emergency Alerts security vulnerability
The Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) protocol allows remote attackers to spoof a Presidential Alert because cryptographic authentication is not used, as demonstrated by MessageIdentifier 4370 in LTE System Information Block 12 (aka SIB12). NOTE: testing inside an RF-isolated shield box suggested that all LTE phones are affected by design (e.g., use of Android versus iOS does not matter); testing in an open RF environment is, of course, contraindicated.
- Severity
- Medium
- CVSS
- 5.3 (3.1)
- Published
- 2019-11-02
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-290
Affected products
- ready / wireless_emergency_alerts
Matched remediation archetype
Cryptography, certificate, signature, and channel validation
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Inventory affected algorithms, key uses, trust stores, certificate validation settings, random sources, and plaintext channels across clients and services.
- Determine which secrets, identities, signatures, or data protections depend on the affected primitive or validation path.
- Check debug, compatibility, fallback, and hostname or audience override settings in build and runtime configuration.
Remediate safely
- Use a maintained platform cryptographic API with approved algorithms, modes, parameters, randomness, and full peer identity validation.
- Remove insecure fallback and validation bypasses; separate keys by purpose and load them from managed secret storage.
- Plan rotation or reissuance for affected keys, certificates, tokens, hashes, or ciphertext and document compatibility sequencing.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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