Temporary storage of plaintext passwords during password changes in matrix synapse
Synapse is an open-source Matrix homeserver written and maintained by the Matrix.org Foundation. When users update their passwords, the new credentials may be briefly held in the server database. While this doesn't grant the server any added capabilities—it already learns the users' passwords as part of the authentication process—it does disrupt the expectation that passwords won't be stored in the database. As a result, these passwords could inadvertently be captured in database backups for a longer duration. These temporarily stored passwords are automatically erased after a 48-hour window. This issue has been addressed in version 1.93.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this issue.
02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE
Affected packages
74 explicit affected versions
74 explicit affected versions
03 / CONNECTIONS
Connected vulnerabilities
04 / EVIDENCE
Source records
Synapse is an open-source Matrix homeserver written and maintained by the Matrix.org Foundation. When users update their passwords, the new credentials may be briefly held in the server database. While this doesn't grant the server any added capabilities—it already learns the users' passwords as part of the authentication process—it does disrupt the expectation that passwords won't be stored in the database. As a result, these passwords could inadvertently be captured in database backups for a longer duration. These temporarily stored passwords are automatically erased after a 48-hour window. This issue has been addressed in version 1.93.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this issue.
### Impact When users update their passwords, the new credentials may be briefly held in the server database. While this doesn't grant the server any added capabilities—it already learns the users' passwords as part of the authentication process—it does disrupt the expectation that passwords won't be stored in the database. As a result, these passwords could inadvertently be captured in database backups for a longer duration. These temporarily stored passwords are automatically erased after a 48-hour window. ### Patches https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/16272 ### References This bug was due to a regression in https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/13188.
Synapse is an open-source Matrix homeserver written and maintained by the Matrix.org Foundation. When users update their passwords, the new credentials may be briefly held in the server database. While this doesn't grant the server any added capabilities—it already learns the users' passwords as part of the authentication process—it does disrupt the expectation that passwords won't be stored in the database. As a result, these passwords could inadvertently be captured in database backups for a longer duration. These temporarily stored passwords are automatically erased after a 48-hour window. This issue has been addressed in version 1.93.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this issue.
05 / REFERENCES
Further evidence
- https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2023/41xxx/CVE-2023-41335.json
- https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/16272
- https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/security/advisories/GHSA-4f74-84v3-j9q5
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/2AFB2Y3S2VCPCN5P2XCZTG24MBMZ7DM4/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/65QPC55I4D27HIZP7H2NQ34EOXHPP4AO/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/N6P4QULVUE254WI7XF2LWWOGHCYVFXFY/
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-41335
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202401-12
- https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse
- https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/commit/69b74d9330e42fc91a9c7423d00a06cd6d3732bf
- https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/13188
- https://github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/matrix-synapse/PYSEC-2023-185.yaml
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/2AFB2Y3S2VCPCN5P2XCZTG24MBMZ7DM4
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/65QPC55I4D27HIZP7H2NQ34EOXHPP4AO
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/N6P4QULVUE254WI7XF2LWWOGHCYVFXFY