CVE-2016-2183 — node
HIGHCVE-2016-2183 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Information Exposure vulnerability. EPSS puts its 30-day exploitation probability at 94.7% (100th percentile). A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2016-2183.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2016-2183 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 397,508 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the ≥ 90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
The DES and Triple DES ciphers, as used in the TLS, SSH, and IPSec protocols and other protocols and products, have a birthday bound of approximately four billion blocks, which makes it easier for remote attackers to obtain cleartext data via a birthday attack against a long-duration encrypted session, as demonstrated by an HTTPS session using Triple DES in CBC mode, aka a "Sweet32" attack.
Affected Products
content security management appliancecisconode.jsnodejsopensslopenssldatabaseoraclepythonpythonenterprise linuxredhatDetection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Fix
Upgrade the affected component to the fixed release for CVE-2016-2183, or apply your distribution's backported patch — distro builds are often patched at an older version number, so check your vendor's advisory rather than the upstream version alone.
Workarounds
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
OpenSSL security update RHSA-2016:1940 mitigates this issue by lowering priority of DES cipher suites so they are not preferred over cipher suites using AES. For compatibility reasons, DES cipher suites remain enabled by default and included in the set of cipher suites identified by the HIGH cipher string. Future…
1.SSL/TLS configurations should prefer AES over DES. Versions of OpenSSL shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 already do so. In the version of OpenSSL shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 3DES is listed below the AES-256 cipher and above the AES-128 cipher, therefore AES-256 based ciphersuite should not be disabled on the server. 2. Servers using OpenSSL, should not disable AES-128 and AES-256 ciphersuites. Versions of Apache shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux use the default cipher string, in which AES is preferred over DES/3DES based ciphersuites. For JBoss Middleware, and Java mitigations, please review this knowledge base…Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2016-2183 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| JBoss Core Services on RHEL 6 | jbcs-httpd24-httpd-0:2.4.23-122.jbcs.el6 | RHSA-2017:2710 |
| JBoss Core Services on RHEL 7 | jbcs-httpd24-httpd-0:2.4.23-122.jbcs.el7 | RHSA-2017:2709 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Supplementary | java-1.7.0-ibm-1:1.7.0.10.1-1jpp.1.el5_11 | RHSA-2017:0337 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Supplementary | java-1.6.0-ibm-1:1.6.0.16.41-1jpp.1.el5_11 | RHSA-2017:0338 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | openssl-0:1.0.1e-48.el6_8.3 | RHSA-2016:1940 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Supplementary | java-1.7.1-ibm-1:1.7.1.4.1-1jpp.1.el6_8 | RHSA-2017:0336 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Supplementary | java-1.8.0-ibm-1:1.8.0.4.1-1jpp.1.el6_8 | RHSA-2017:0462 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | python-0:2.7.5-69.el7_5 | RHSA-2018:2123 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2016-2183 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.