Vulnerability Monitor

The vendors, products, and vulnerabilities you care about

CVE-2017-17688

The OpenPGP specification allows a Cipher Feedback Mode (CFB) malleability-gadget attack that can indirectly lead to plaintext exfiltration, aka EFAIL. NOTE: third parties report that this is a problem in applications that mishandle the Modification Detection Code (MDC) feature or accept an obsolete packet type, not a problem in the OpenPGP specification

Security Impact Summary

This vulnerability carries a MEDIUM severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 5.9, indicating it can be exploited remotely over the network but requires specific conditions to be met without requiring user interaction and does not require pre-existing privileges . The vulnerability impacts confidentiality (data exposure), for affected systems. Impacting 11 products from apple, from bloop, from emclient and 8 others, organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.

Historical Context

First disclosed in 2018, this vulnerability was reported during a period defined by widespread IoT adoption challenges, mobile security concerns, and the emergence of advanced persistent threat (APT) techniques. Contemporary mitigation strategies focused on secure development practices and third-party component vetting.

Published

2018-05-16T19:29:00.223

Last Modified

2024-11-21T03:18:27.723

Status

Modified

Source

[email protected]

Severity

CVSSv3.0: 5.9 (MEDIUM)

CVSSv2 Vector

AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

Access Vector: NETWORK
Access Complexity: MEDIUM
Authentication: NONE
Confidentiality Impact: PARTIAL
Integrity Impact: NONE
Availability Impact: NONE

Exploitability Score

8.6

Impact Score

2.9

Weaknesses

Type: Primary
NVD-CWE-noinfo

Affected Vendors & Products

Type	Vendor	Product	Version/Range	Vulnerable?
Application	apple	mail	-	Yes
Application	apple	mail	-	Yes
Application	bloop	airmail	-	Yes
Application	emclient	emclient	-	Yes
Application	flipdogsolutions	maildroid	-	Yes
Application	freron	mailmate	-	Yes
Application	horde	horde_imp	-	Yes
Application	microsoft	outlook	2007	Yes
Application	mozilla	thunderbird	-	Yes
Application	postbox-inc	postbox	-	Yes
Application	r2mail2	r2mail2	-	Yes
Application	roundcube	webmail	-	Yes

References

http://flaked.sockpuppet.org/2018/05/16/a-unified-timeline.html Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/104162 Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry ([email protected])
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1040904 Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry ([email protected])
https://efail.de Exploit, Mitigation, Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2018-May/060334.html Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17066419 Issue Tracking, Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://protonmail.com/blog/pgp-vulnerability-efail Issue Tracking, Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/995996706457243648 Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-15-18814817 Issue Tracking, Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
https://www.synology.com/support/security/Synology_SA_18_22 Third Party Advisory ([email protected])
http://flaked.sockpuppet.org/2018/05/16/a-unified-timeline.html Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/104162 Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1040904 Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://efail.de Exploit, Mitigation, Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2018-May/060334.html Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17066419 Issue Tracking, Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://protonmail.com/blog/pgp-vulnerability-efail Issue Tracking, Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/995996706457243648 Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-15-18814817 Issue Tracking, Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)
https://www.synology.com/support/security/Synology_SA_18_22 Third Party Advisory (af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108)

How SecUtils Interprets This CVE

SecUtils normalizes and enriches National Vulnerability Database (NVD) records by standardizing vendor and product identifiers, aggregating vulnerability metadata from both NVD and MITRE sources, and providing structured context for security teams. For apple's affected products, we extract Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) classifications, CVSS severity metrics, and reference data to enable rapid vulnerability prioritization and asset correlation. This record contains no exploit code, proof-of-concept instructions, or attack methodologies—only defensive intelligence necessary for patch management, risk assessment, and security operations.