Openssh: machine-in-the-middle attack if verifyhostkeydns is enabled
13Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 6.8epss 7.4%
exploitation probability
7.4%top 6% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
A vulnerability was found in OpenSSH when the VerifyHostKeyDNS option is enabled. A machine-in-the-middle attack can be performed by a malicious machine impersonating a legit server. This issue occurs due to how OpenSSH mishandles error codes in specific conditions when verifying the host key. For an attack to be considered successful, the attacker needs to manage to exhaust the client's memory resource first, turning the attack complexity high.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
Affected products
OpenSSHRed Hat · Red Hat Discovery 1.14Red Hat · Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10Red Hat · Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6Red Hat · Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7Red Hat · Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8Red Hat · Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9Red Hat · Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 Extended Update SupportRed Hat · Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4References
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2025:16823https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2025:3837https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2025:6993https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2025:8385https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-26465https://access.redhat.com/solutions/7109879https://blog.qualys.com/vulnerabilities-threat-research/2025/02/18/qualys-tru-discovers-two-vulnerabilities-in-openssh-cve-2025-26465-cve-2025-26466https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2344780https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1237040https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-082556.htmlhttps://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-585531.htmlhttp://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2025/Feb/18