CVE-2021-40055: Huawei OTA Insecure SSL Configuration Man-In-The-Middle Vulnerability

Summary In this advisory we are disclosing a vulnerability in the Huawei Over-The-Air (OTA) update implementation that allows bypassing SSL protections and execute a Man-In-The-Middle attack. The vulnerability was fixed in March 2022. Vulnerability Details Huawei devices - both those running Android and those running HarmonyOS - use Huawei’s custom implementation for applying OTA updates. OTA updates are packaged into a zip container. The update mechanism has several checks that are meant to ensure the authenticity of OTA images before they are applied: the over-the-air download is supposed to happen over a secure connection to prevent Man-In-The-Middle attacks, the zip file has a cryptographic signature that is verified by the update process, and finally the contents of the zip file include further authentications tags.