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Upgrade now to address E2EE vulnerabilities in matrix-js-sdk, matrix-ios-sdk and matrix-android-sdk2

28.09.2022 17:41 — Security — Matthew Hodgson , Denis Kasak , Matrix Cryptography Team , Matrix Security Team

TL;DR:

  • Two critical severity vulnerabilities in end-to-end encryption were found in the SDKs which power Element, Beeper, Cinny, SchildiChat, Circuli, Synod.im and any other clients based on matrix-js-sdk, matrix-ios-sdk or matrix-android-sdk2.
  • These have now been fixed, and we have not seen evidence of them being exploited in the wild. All of the critical vulnerabilities require cooperation from a malicious homeserver to be exploited.
  • Please upgrade immediately in order to be protected against these vulnerabilities.
  • Clients with other encryption implementations (including Hydrogen, ElementX, Nheko, FluffyChat, Syphon, Timmy, Gomuks and Pantalaimon) are not affected; this is not a protocol bug.
  • We take the security of our end-to-end encryption extremely seriously, and we have an ongoing series of public independent audits booked to help guard against future vulnerabilities. We will also be making some protocol changes in the future to provide additional layers of protection.
  • This resolves the pre-disclosure issued on September 23rd.

Continue reading…

Pre-disclosure: upcoming critical security release of Matrix SDKs and clients

23.09.2022 14:53 — Security — Matrix Security Team

We will be releasing a security update to matrix-js-sdk, matrix-ios-sdk and matrix-android-sdk2 and clients which implement end-to-end encryption with these libraries, to patch critical security issues, on Wed, Sept 28th. The releases will be published in the afternoon, followed by the disclosure blog post around 16:00 UTC. The affected clients include Element Web, Desktop, iOS and Android. We will also be working with downstream packagers and forks over the coming days to ensure a synchronised release to address affected clients.

Clients using matrix-rust-sdk, hydrogen-sdk and matrix-nio are not affected by these critical issues. We are also auditing third-party client SDKs and clients in advance of the release, and will work with the projects if action is needed. So far we've confirmed that other popular SDK/clients including mtxclient (nheko), Matrix Dart SDK (FluffyChat), Trixnity (Timmy), Syphon, mautrix-go (Gomuks) and mautrix-python are not affected by the issues in question.

If you maintain or package a (potentially) affected E2EE-capable Matrix client and need to coordinate on the release, please contact [email protected].

We advise to upgrade as soon as possible after the patched versions are released.

Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve this issue.