Authentication Bypass and Message Injection in MOOS pShare

MOOS-IvP essential-moos versions 10.0.1 and earlier contain a critical authentication bypass vulnerability within the pShare component. pShare is designed to share MOOS messages across different MOOS communities. The vulnerability arises because the process accepts UDP datagrams from any source without performing authentication or identity verification. An attacker on the local network can craft malicious UDP packets and inject arbitrary messages into the MOOS community while spoofing the identity of a legitimate MOOS process. Additionally, the lack of input validation allows an attacker to send malformed UDP datagrams that cause the pShare process to crash, resulting in a denial-of-service condition for the impacted MOOS community. This vulnerability is significant for environments relying on the integrity of MOOS-based communication in robotic and autonomous system fleets.

Impact

Successful exploitation allows attackers to perform unauthorized message injection, potentially leading to the corruption of operational data or the execution of unauthorized commands within the MOOS community. Denial-of-service attacks against pShare can disrupt communication between critical mission components, rendering autonomous systems inoperable or uncontrollable.

Recommendation

• Monitor network traffic for unexpected UDP communication directed at the port used by the pShare process.
• Implement network-level access control lists (ACLs) to restrict access to the pShare UDP port to trusted IP addresses only.
• Update all instances of MOOS-IvP essential-moos to a version that implements input validation and authentication for incoming UDP datagrams, if available.
• Audit logs for repeated service restarts or process crashes of the pShare binary, which may indicate attempted exploitation of the denial-of-service vulnerability.