Vulnerability in Ready Wireless Emergency Alerts

CVE-2019-18659

The Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) protocol allows remote attackers to spoof a Presidential Alert because cryptographic authentication is not used, as demonstrated by MessageIdentifier 4370 in LTE System Information Block 12 (aka SIB12). NOTE: testing inside an RF-isolated shield box suggested that all LTE phones are affected by design (e.g., use of Android versus iOS does not matter); testing in an open RF environment is, of course, contraindicated.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.3 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.010 (60.8th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 61st percentile — 60.8% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2019-18659: held from 0.010 to 0.010.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.010 · newest: 0.010 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2019-18659?
CVE-2019-18659 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Ready Wireless Emergency Alerts, classified under Authentication Bypass by Spoofing. CVSS score: 5.3/10. Published 2019-11-02.
How severe is CVE-2019-18659?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.3 out of 10.