Custom cacerts or cacertfile do not restrict trust to the pinned CA in hackney

Summary

Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in hackney_ssl in benoitc hackney allows an on-path attacker to impersonate a server pinned to a private certificate authority via a certificate chain that ends in a publicly trusted root. hackney adds {partial_chain, fun hackney_ssl:partial_chain/1} to every verify_peer configuration. The callback returns any certificate in the peer chain whose public key matches a root in the bundled certifi store as the trust anchor, and OTP honours that callback over the configured cacerts. hackney_ssl:merge_ssl_opts/3 kept the callback when the caller replaced the trust store with cacerts or cacertfile in ssl_options, so a connection pinned to a private CA still accepted any chain that carried a publicly trusted root.

The hostname check still applies, so the attacker needs a publicly trusted certificate for the pinned hostname.

This issue affects hackney: from 1.24.0 before 4.9.0.

Details

1. Default trust options. hackney_ssl:check_hostname_opts/1 builds the verify_peer options for every TLS connection: the certifi cacerts, a hostname verify_fun, and {partial_chain, fun hackney_ssl:partial_chain/1}. The callback walks the peer chain and returns {trusted_ca, Cert} for the first certificate whose public key matches a root in the bundled certifi store, which lets OTP accept chains that end in a cross-signed root.

2. Merge keeps the callback. When the caller passes ssl_options, hackney_ssl:merge_ssl_opts/3 merges them over the defaults with the caller's values winning per key. cacerts or cacertfile replace the trust store, and a cacertfile removes the default cacerts, but partial_chain has no counterpart in the caller's options and stays.

3. Validation. OTP consults partial_chain before the configured trust store. A peer chain that carries any publicly trusted root therefore gets that root as its trust anchor, and the pinned cacerts are never consulted. Only the hostname verify_fun still constrains the attacker.

Impact

An attacker positioned between the client and a server pinned to a private CA, holding a publicly trusted certificate for the pinned hostname, can impersonate the server and read or modify the traffic the client sends and receives.

Workarounds

Pass your own {partial_chain, Fun} in ssl_options alongside cacerts or cacertfile. A caller-supplied partial_chain replaces hackney's in the merge, and a callback that returns unknown_ca makes OTP validate against the configured cacerts only.

Configurations

The caller passes cacerts or cacertfile in ssl_options to restrict trust to a private CA, without a partial_chain of its own. Connections that use hackney's default certifi trust store are not affected.