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PYSEC-2026-1758

Dashboard / Vulnerabilities / PYSEC-2026-1758

PYSEC-2026-1758

Published: 7 Jul 2026Last Modified: 7 Jul 2026

Aliases:

CVE-2023-48795

GHSA-45x7-px36-x8w8

GO-2023-2402

Summary: Prefix Truncation Attack against ChaCha20-Poly1305 and Encrypt-then-MAC aka Terrapin

Details: ### Summary Terrapin is a prefix truncation attack targeting the SSH protocol. More precisely, Terrapin breaks the integrity of SSH's secure channel. By carefully adjusting the sequence numbers during the handshake, an attacker can remove an arbitrary amount of messages sent by the client or server at the beginning of the secure channel without the client or server noticing it. ### Mitigations To mitigate this protocol vulnerability, OpenSSH suggested a so-called "strict kex" which alters the SSH handshake to ensure a Man-in-the-Middle attacker cannot introduce unauthenticated messages as well as convey sequence number manipulation across handshakes. **Warning: To take effect, both the client and server must support this countermeasure.** As a stop-gap measure, peers may also (temporarily) disable the affected algorithms and use unaffected alternatives like AES-GCM instead until patches are available. ### Details The SSH specifications of ChaCha20-Poly1305 ([email protected]) and Encrypt-then-MAC (*[email protected] MACs) are vulnerable against an arbitrary prefix truncation attack (a.k.a. Terrapin attack). This allows for an extension negotiation downgrade by stripping the SSH_MSG_EXT_INFO sent after the first message after SSH_MSG_NEWKEYS, downgrading security, and disabling attack countermeasures in some versions of OpenSSH. When targeting Encrypt-then-MAC, this attack requires the use of a CBC cipher to be practically exploitable due to the internal workings of the cipher mode. Additionally, this novel attack technique can be used to exploit previously unexploitable implementation flaws in a Man-in-the-Middle scenario. The attack works by an attacker injecting an arbitrary number of SSH_MSG_IGNORE messages during the initial key exchange and consequently removing the same number of messages just after the initial key exchange has concluded. This is possible due to missing authentication of the excess SSH_MSG_IGNORE messages and the fact that the implicit sequence numbers used within the SSH protocol are only checked after the initial key exchange. In the case of ChaCha20-Poly1305, the attack is guaranteed to work on every connection as this cipher does not maintain an internal state other than the message's sequence number. In the case of Encrypt-Then-MAC, practical exploitation requires the use of a CBC cipher; while theoretical integrity is broken for all ciphers when using this mode, message processing will fail at the application layer for CTR and stream ciphers. For more details see [https://terrapin-attack.com](https://terrapin-attack.com). ### Impact This attack targets the specification of ChaCha20-Poly1305 ([email protected]) and Encrypt-then-MAC (*[email protected]), which are widely adopted by well-known SSH implementations and can be considered de-facto standard. These algorithms can be practically exploited; however, in the case of Encrypt-Then-MAC, we additionally require the use of a CBC cipher. As a consequence, this attack works against all well-behaving SSH implementations supporting either of those algorithms and can be used to downgrade (but not fully strip) connection security in case SSH extension negotiation (RFC8308) is supported. The attack may also enable attackers to exploit certain implementation flaws in a man-in-the-middle (MitM) scenario.

Affected packages

Package

Name: paramiko

Purl: pkg:pypi/paramiko

Affected ranges

Type: ECOSYSTEM

Events:

Introduced- 2.5.0

Fixed -3.4.0

Affected versions

2.10.0

2.10.1

2.10.2

2.10.3

2.10.4

2.10.5

2.10.6

Common Vulnerability Scoring System

Attack Vector

Network

Adjacent

Local

Physical

Privileges Required

None

Low

High

User Interaction

None

Required

Scope

Unchanged

Changed

Confidentiality

None

Low

High

Integrity

None

Low

High

Availability

None

Low

High