CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-23612 — OpenSearch is an open source distributed and RESTful search engine

High CVSS 8.8

OpenSearch is an open source distributed and RESTful search engine. OpenSearch uses JWTs to store role claims obtained from the Identity Provider (IdP) when the authentication backend is SAML or OpenID Connect. There is an issue in how those claims are processed from the JWTs where the leading and trailing whitespace is trimmed, allowing users to potentially claim roles they are not assigned to if any role matches the whitespace-stripped version of the roles they are a member of. This issue is only present for authenticated users, and it requires either the existence of roles that match, not considering leading/trailing whitespace, or the ability for users to create said matching roles. In addition, the Identity Provider must allow leading and trailing spaces in role names. OpenSearch 1.0.0-1.3.7 and 2.0.0-2.4.1 are affected. Users are advised to upgrade to OpenSearch 1.3.8 or 2.5.0. There are no known workarounds for this issue.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.8 (3.1)
Published
2023-01-26
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-287

Affected products

  • amazon / opensearch

Showing 1 representative product identities from 2 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Authentication bypass and missing authentication

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Check exposure

  • Map every affected endpoint and protocol path, including alternate ports, legacy routes, recovery flows, service accounts, and machine-to-machine access.
  • Confirm which deployments enable the affected authentication mode and whether the interface is reachable from untrusted networks.
  • Review session, token, credential, and proxy trust configuration without attempting account takeover.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and centralize fail-closed authentication before protected request handling.
  • Remove default or embedded credentials, rotate affected secrets and sessions, and bind authentication decisions to the intended audience and channel.
  • Add negative tests for alternate routes, malformed or absent credentials, recovery flows, and proxy-derived identity.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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