CVE-2022-23649 LOW

CVE-2022-23649: Improper Certificate Validation in Cosign

Vendor Sigstore
Product cosign
Weakness CWE-295
Published February 18, 2022
Last update April 23, 2025

CVSS base score

3.3/10
Attack vector Local
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required Low
User interaction None
Confidentiality None
Integrity Low

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

What the vulnerability does

01Description

Cosign provides container signing, verification, and storage in an OCI registry for the sigstore project. Prior to version 1.5.2, Cosign can be manipulated to claim that an entry for a signature exists in the Rekor transparency log even if it doesn't. This requires the attacker to have pull and push permissions for the signature in OCI. This can happen with both standard signing with a keypair and "keyless signing" with Fulcio. If an attacker has access to the signature in OCI, they can manipulate cosign into believing the entry was stored in Rekor even though it wasn't. The vulnerability has been patched in v1.5.2 of Cosign. The `signature` in the `signedEntryTimestamp` provided by Rekor is now compared to the `signature` that is being verified. If these don't match, then an error is returned. If a valid bundle is copied to a different signature, verification should fail. Cosign output now only informs the user that certificates were verified if a certificate was in fact verified. There is currently no known workaround.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

February 18, 2022 CVE published
April 23, 2025 Record updated