Bug 2264593 (CVE-2023-52160)

In wpa_supplicant, a flaw was discovered in the implementation of PEAP, which allows an attacker to skip the second phase of authentication when the target device has not been properly configured to verify the authentication server. Note that PEAP is the most common authentication method for Enterprise networks. By skipping Phase-2 authentication, it’s much easier for an attacker to create a rogue clone of a trusted WiFi network and trick the victim into connecting, all without knowing their password.

Typical Attack Prerequisites:
- The attacker needs to know the SSID of the target Enterprise WPA2/3 network
- The attacker must be within range of their victim, who can be located anywhere, i.e. they don’t need to be in range of the network being impersonated during the attack
- wpa_supplicant must be configured to not verify the authentication server’s TLS certificate

It is trivial to harvest SSIDs from around office buildings or to advertise popular Enterprise network names such as eduroam, Vodafone Homespot, TelenetWiFree or Unitymedia WifiSpot for example, and simply wait for an unsuspecting victim to connect. The misconfiguration of wpa_supplicant is unfortunately a known issue on many systems. Proper configuration is a manual process, whose confusing and tedious nature prompts many users to skip it.

References:
https://www.top10vpn.com/research/wifi-vulnerabilities/
https://w1.fi/cgit/hostap/commit/?id=8e6485a1bcb0baff