OpenSSL

Cryptography and SSL/TLS Toolkit

Vulnerabilities

If you think you have found a security bug in OpenSSL, please report it to us.

Show issues fixed only in OpenSSL 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, 3.0, 1.1.1, 1.1.0, 1.0.2, 1.0.1, 1.0.0, 0.9.8, 0.9.7, 0.9.6, or all versions

Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0

Jump to year: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021

2024

CVE-2024-4741 Use After Free with SSL_free_buffers [Low severity] 27 May 2024:
Issue summary: Calling the OpenSSL API function SSL_free_buffers may cause memory to be accessed that was previously freed in some situations
Impact summary: A use after free can have a range of potential consequences such as the corruption of valid data, crashes or execution of arbitrary code. However, only applications that directly call the SSL_free_buffers function are affected by this issue. Applications that do not call this function are not vulnerable. Our investigations indicate that this function is rarely used by applications.
The SSL_free_buffers function is used to free the internal OpenSSL buffer used when processing an incoming record from the network. The call is only expected to succeed if the buffer is not currently in use. However, two scenarios have been identified where the buffer is freed even when still in use.
The first scenario occurs where a record header has been received from the network and processed by OpenSSL, but the full record body has not yet arrived. In this case calling SSL_free_buffers will succeed even though a record has only been partially processed and the buffer is still in use.
The second scenario occurs where a full record containing application data has been received and processed by OpenSSL but the application has only read part of this data. Again a call to SSL_free_buffers will succeed even though the buffer is still in use.
While these scenarios could occur accidentally during normal operation a malicious attacker could attempt to engineer a stituation where this occurs. We are not aware of this issue being actively exploited.
The FIPS modules in 3.3, 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue.
Found by William Ahern (Akamai). Fix developed by Matt Caswell. Fix developed by Watson Ladd (Akamai).
CVE-2024-4603 Excessive time spent checking DSA keys and parameters [Low severity] 16 May 2024:
Issue summary: Checking excessively long DSA keys or parameters may be very slow.
Impact summary: Applications that use the functions EVP_PKEY_param_check() or EVP_PKEY_public_check() to check a DSA public key or DSA parameters may experience long delays. Where the key or parameters that are being checked have been obtained from an untrusted source this may lead to a Denial of Service.
The functions EVP_PKEY_param_check() or EVP_PKEY_public_check() perform various checks on DSA parameters. Some of those computations take a long time if the modulus (`p` parameter) is too large.
Trying to use a very large modulus is slow and OpenSSL will not allow using public keys with a modulus which is over 10,000 bits in length for signature verification. However the key and parameter check functions do not limit the modulus size when performing the checks.
An application that calls EVP_PKEY_param_check() or EVP_PKEY_public_check() and supplies a key or parameters obtained from an untrusted source could be vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack.
These functions are not called by OpenSSL itself on untrusted DSA keys so only applications that directly call these functions may be vulnerable.
Also vulnerable are the OpenSSL pkey and pkeyparam command line applications when using the `-check` option.
The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected by this issue.
The OpenSSL 3.0 and 3.1 FIPS providers are affected by this issue.
Found by OSS-Fuzz. Fix developed by Tomas Mraz.
  • Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.14 (git commit) (Affected since 3.0.0)
  • This issue was also addressed in OpenSSL 3.1.6, OpenSSL 3.2.2, OpenSSL 3.3.1
CVE-2024-2511 Unbounded memory growth with session handling in TLSv1.3 [Low severity] 08 April 2024:
Issue summary: Some non-default TLS server configurations can cause unbounded memory growth when processing TLSv1.3 sessions
Impact summary: An attacker may exploit certain server configurations to trigger unbounded memory growth that would lead to a Denial of Service
This problem can occur in TLSv1.3 if the non-default SSL_OP_NO_TICKET option is being used (but not if early_data support is also configured and the default anti-replay protection is in use). In this case, under certain conditions, the session cache can get into an incorrect state and it will fail to flush properly as it fills. The session cache will continue to grow in an unbounded manner. A malicious client could deliberately create the scenario for this failure to force a Denial of Service. It may also happen by accident in normal operation.
This issue only affects TLS servers supporting TLSv1.3. It does not affect TLS clients.
The FIPS modules in 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue. OpenSSL 1.0.2 is also not affected by this issue.
Found by Manish Patidar (Hewlett Packard Enterprise). Fix developed by Matt Caswell.
CVE-2024-0727 PKCS12 Decoding crashes [Low severity] 25 January 2024:
Issue summary: Processing a maliciously formatted PKCS12 file may lead OpenSSL to crash leading to a potential Denial of Service attack
Impact summary: Applications loading files in the PKCS12 format from untrusted sources might terminate abruptly.
A file in PKCS12 format can contain certificates and keys and may come from an untrusted source. The PKCS12 specification allows certain fields to be NULL, but OpenSSL does not correctly check for this case. This can lead to a NULL pointer dereference that results in OpenSSL crashing. If an application processes PKCS12 files from an untrusted source using the OpenSSL APIs then that application will be vulnerable to this issue.
OpenSSL APIs that are vulnerable to this are: PKCS12_parse(), PKCS12_unpack_p7data(), PKCS12_unpack_p7encdata(), PKCS12_unpack_authsafes() and PKCS12_newpass().
We have also fixed a similar issue in SMIME_write_PKCS7(). However since this function is related to writing data we do not consider it security significant.
The FIPS modules in 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue.
Found by Bahaa Naamneh (Crosspoint Labs). Fix developed by Matt Caswell.
CVE-2023-6237 Excessive time spent checking invalid RSA public keys [Low severity] 15 January 2024:
Issue summary: Checking excessively long invalid RSA public keys may take a long time.
Impact summary: Applications that use the function EVP_PKEY_public_check() to check RSA public keys may experience long delays. Where the key that is being checked has been obtained from an untrusted source this may lead to a Denial of Service.
When function EVP_PKEY_public_check() is called on RSA public keys, a computation is done to confirm that the RSA modulus, n, is composite. For valid RSA keys, n is a product of two or more large primes and this computation completes quickly. However, if n is an overly large prime, then this computation would take a long time.
An application that calls EVP_PKEY_public_check() and supplies an RSA key obtained from an untrusted source could be vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack.
The function EVP_PKEY_public_check() is not called from other OpenSSL functions however it is called from the OpenSSL pkey command line application. For that reason that application is also vulnerable if used with the '-pubin' and '-check' options on untrusted data.
The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected by this issue.
The OpenSSL 3.0 and 3.1 FIPS providers are affected by this issue.
Found by OSS-Fuzz. Fix developed by Tomas Mraz.
  • Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.13 (git commit) (Affected since 3.0.0)
  • This issue was also addressed in OpenSSL 3.1.5, OpenSSL 3.2.1
CVE-2023-6129 POLY1305 MAC implementation corrupts vector registers on PowerPC [Low severity] 09 January 2024:
Issue summary: The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication code) implementation contains a bug that might corrupt the internal state of applications running on PowerPC CPU based platforms if the CPU provides vector instructions.
Impact summary: If an attacker can influence whether the POLY1305 MAC algorithm is used, the application state might be corrupted with various application dependent consequences.
The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication code) implementation in OpenSSL for PowerPC CPUs restores the contents of vector registers in a different order than they are saved. Thus the contents of some of these vector registers are corrupted when returning to the caller. The vulnerable code is used only on newer PowerPC processors supporting the PowerISA 2.07 instructions.
The consequences of this kind of internal application state corruption can be various - from no consequences, if the calling application does not depend on the contents of non-volatile XMM registers at all, to the worst consequences, where the attacker could get complete control of the application process. However unless the compiler uses the vector registers for storing pointers, the most likely consequence, if any, would be an incorrect result of some application dependent calculations or a crash leading to a denial of service.
The POLY1305 MAC algorithm is most frequently used as part of the CHACHA20-POLY1305 AEAD (authenticated encryption with associated data) algorithm. The most common usage of this AEAD cipher is with TLS protocol versions 1.2 and 1.3. If this cipher is enabled on the server a malicious client can influence whether this AEAD cipher is used. This implies that TLS server applications using OpenSSL can be potentially impacted. However we are currently not aware of any concrete application that would be affected by this issue therefore we consider this a Low severity security issue.
Found by Sverker Eriksson. Fix developed by Rohan McLure.
  • Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.13 (git commit) (Affected since 3.0.0)
  • This issue was also addressed in OpenSSL 3.2.1, OpenSSL 3.1.5

2023

CVE-2023-5678 Excessive time spent in DH check / generation with large Q parameter value [LOW severity] 06 November 2023:
Issue summary: Generating excessively long X9.42 DH keys or checking excessively long X9.42 DH keys or parameters may be very slow.
Impact summary: Applications that use the functions DH_generate_key() to generate an X9.42 DH key may experience long delays. Likewise, applications that use DH_check_pub_key(), DH_check_pub_key_ex() or EVP_PKEY_public_check() to check an X9.42 DH key or X9.42 DH parameters may experience long delays. Where the key or parameters that are being checked have been obtained from an untrusted source this may lead to a Denial of Service.
While DH_check() performs all the necessary checks (as of CVE-2023-3817), DH_check_pub_key() doesn't make any of these checks, and is therefore vulnerable for excessively large P and Q parameters.
Likewise, while DH_generate_key() performs a check for an excessively large P, it doesn't check for an excessively large Q.
An application that calls DH_generate_key() or DH_check_pub_key() and supplies a key or parameters obtained from an untrusted source could be vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack.
DH_generate_key() and DH_check_pub_key() are also called by a number of other OpenSSL functions. An application calling any of those other functions may similarly be affected. The other functions affected by this are DH_check_pub_key_ex(), EVP_PKEY_public_check(), and EVP_PKEY_generate().
Also vulnerable are the OpenSSL pkey command line application when using the "-pubcheck" option, as well as the OpenSSL genpkey command line application.
The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected by this issue.
The OpenSSL 3.0 and 3.1 FIPS providers are not affected by this issue.
Found by David Benjamin (Google). Fix developed by Richard Levitte.
CVE-2023-5363 Incorrect cipher key & IV length processing [MODERATE severity] 24 October 2023:
Issue summary: A bug has been identified in the processing of key and initialisation vector (IV) lengths. This can lead to potential truncation or overruns during the initialisation of some symmetric ciphers.
Impact summary: A truncation in the IV can result in non-uniqueness, which could result in loss of confidentiality for some cipher modes.
When calling EVP_EncryptInit_ex2(), EVP_DecryptInit_ex2() or EVP_CipherInit_ex2() the provided OSSL_PARAM array is processed after the key and IV have been established. Any alterations to the key length, via the "keylen" parameter or the IV length, via the "ivlen" parameter, within the OSSL_PARAM array will not take effect as intended, potentially causing truncation or overreading of these values. The following ciphers and cipher modes are impacted: RC2, RC4, RC5, CCM, GCM and OCB.
For the CCM, GCM and OCB cipher modes, truncation of the IV can result in loss of confidentiality. For example, when following NIST's SP 800-38D section 8.2.1 guidance for constructing a deterministic IV for AES in GCM mode, truncation of the counter portion could lead to IV reuse.
Both truncations and overruns of the key and overruns of the IV will produce incorrect results and could, in some cases, trigger a memory exception. However, these issues are not currently assessed as security critical.
Changing the key and/or IV lengths is not considered to be a common operation and the vulnerable API was recently introduced. Furthermore it is likely that application developers will have spotted this problem during testing since decryption would fail unless both peers in the communication were similarly vulnerable. For these reasons we expect the probability of an application being vulnerable to this to be quite low. However if an application is vulnerable then this issue is considered very serious. For these reasons we have assessed this issue as Moderate severity overall.
The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected by this issue.
The OpenSSL 3.0 and 3.1 FIPS providers are not affected by this because the issue lies outside of the FIPS provider boundary.
OpenSSL 3.1 and 3.0 are vulnerable to this issue.
Found by Tony Battersby (Cybernetics). Fix developed by Dr Paul Dale.
  • Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.12 (git commit) (Affected since 3.0.0)
  • This issue was also addressed in OpenSSL 3.1.4
CVE-2023-4807 POLY1305 MAC implementation corrupts XMM registers on Windows [Low severity] 08 September 2023:
Issue summary: The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication code) implementation contains a bug that might corrupt the internal state of applications on the Windows 64 platform when running on newer X86_64 processors supporting the AVX512-IFMA instructions.
Impact summary: If in an application that uses the OpenSSL library an attacker can influence whether the POLY1305 MAC algorithm is used, the application state might be corrupted with various application dependent consequences.
The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication code) implementation in OpenSSL does not save the contents of non-volatile XMM registers on Windows 64 platform when calculating the MAC of data larger than 64 bytes. Before returning to the caller all the XMM registers are set to zero rather than restoring their previous content. The vulnerable code is used only on newer x86_64 processors supporting the AVX512-IFMA instructions.
The consequences of this kind of internal application state corruption can be various - from no consequences, if the calling application does not depend on the contents of non-volatile XMM registers at all, to the worst consequences, where the attacker could get complete control of the application process. However given the contents of the registers are just zeroized so the attacker cannot put arbitrary values inside, the most likely consequence, if any, would be an incorrect result of some application dependent calculations or a crash leading to a denial of service.
The POLY1305 MAC algorithm is most frequently used as part of the CHACHA20-POLY1305 AEAD (authenticated encryption with associated data) algorithm. The most common usage of this AEAD cipher is with TLS protocol versions 1.2 and 1.3 and a malicious client can influence whether this AEAD cipher is used by the server. This implies that server applications using OpenSSL can be potentially impacted. However we are currently not aware of any concrete application that would be affected by this issue therefore we consider this a Low severity security issue.
As a workaround the AVX512-IFMA instructions support can be disabled at runtime by setting the environment variable OPENSSL_ia32cap:
OPENSSL_ia32cap=:~0x200000
The FIPS provider is not affected by this issue.
Found by Zach Wilson. Fix developed by Bernd Edlinger.
  • Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.11 (git commit) (Affected since 3.0.0)
  • This issue was also addressed in OpenSSL 3.1.3, OpenSSL 1.1.1w
CVE-2023-3817 Excessive time spent checking DH q parameter value [Low severity] 31 July 2023:
Issue summary: Checking excessively long DH keys or parameters may be very slow.
Impact summary: Applications that use the functions DH_check(), DH_check_ex() or EVP_PKEY_param_check() to check a DH key or DH parameters may experience long delays. Where the key or parameters that are being checked have been obtained from an untrusted source this may lead to a Denial of Service.
The function DH_check() performs various checks on DH parameters. After fixing CVE-2023-3446 it was discovered that a large q parameter value can also trigger an overly long computation during some of these checks. A correct q value, if present, cannot be larger than the modulus p parameter, thus it is unnecessary to perform these checks if q is larger than p.
An application that calls DH_check() and supplies a key or parameters obtained from an untrusted source could be vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack.
The function DH_check() is itself called by a number of other OpenSSL functions. An application calling any of those other functions may similarly be affected. The other functions affected by this are DH_check_ex() and EVP_PKEY_param_check().
Also vulnerable are the OpenSSL dhparam and pkeyparam command line applications when using the "-check" option.
The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected by this issue.
The OpenSSL 3.0 and 3.1 FIPS providers are not affected by this issue.
Found by Bernd Edlinger. Fix developed by Tomas Mraz.
CVE-2023-3446 Excessive time spent checking DH keys and parameters [Low severity] 13 July 2023:
Issue summary: Checking excessively long DH keys or parameters may be very slow.
Impact summary: Applications that use the functions DH_check(), DH_check_ex() or EVP_PKEY_param_check() to check a DH key or DH parameters may experience long delays. Where the key or parameters that are being checked have been obtained from an untrusted source this may lead to a Denial of Service.
The function DH_check() performs various checks on DH parameters. One of those checks confirms that the modulus ('p' parameter) is not too large. Trying to use a very large modulus is slow and OpenSSL will not normally use a modulus which is over 10,000 bits in length.
However the DH_check() function checks numerous aspects of the key or parameters that have been supplied. Some of those checks use the supplied modulus value even if it has already been found to be too large.
An application that calls DH_check() and supplies a key or parameters obtained from an untrusted source could be vulernable to a Denial of Service attack.
The function DH_check() is itself called by a number of other OpenSSL functions. An application calling any of those other functions may similarly be affected. The other functions affected by this are DH_check_ex() and EVP_PKEY_param_check().
Also vulnerable are the OpenSSL dhparam and pkeyparam command line applications when using the '-check' option.
The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected by this issue. The OpenSSL 3.0 and 3.1 FIPS providers are not affected by this issue.
Found by OSSfuzz. Fix developed by Matt Caswell.
CVE-2023-2975 AES-SIV implementation ignores empty associated data entries [Low severity] 07 July 2023:
Issue summary: The AES-SIV cipher implementation contains a bug that causes it to ignore empty associated data entries which are unauthenticated as a consequence.
Impact summary: Applications that use the AES-SIV algorithm and want to authenticate empty data entries as associated data can be misled by removing, adding or reordering such empty entries as these are ignored by the OpenSSL implementation. We are currently unaware of any such applications.
The AES-SIV algorithm allows for authentication of multiple associated data entries along with the encryption. To authenticate empty data the application has to call EVP_EncryptUpdate() (or EVP_CipherUpdate()) with NULL pointer as the output buffer and 0 as the input buffer length. The AES-SIV implementation in OpenSSL just returns success for such a call instead of performing the associated data authentication operation. The empty data thus will not be authenticated.
As this issue does not affect non-empty associated data authentication and we expect it to be rare for an application to use empty associated data entries this is qualified as Low severity issue.
Found by Juerg Wullschleger (Google). Fix developed by Tomas Mraz.
  • Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.10 (git commit) (Affected since 3.0.0)
  • This issue was also addressed in OpenSSL 3.1.2
CVE-2023-2650 Possible DoS translating ASN.1 object identifiers [Moderate severity] 30 May 2023:
Issue summary: Processing some specially crafted ASN.1 object identifiers or data containing them may be very slow.
Impact summary: Applications that use OBJ_obj2txt() directly, or use any of the OpenSSL subsystems OCSP, PKCS7/SMIME, CMS, CMP/CRMF or TS with no message size limit may experience notable to very long delays when processing those messages, which may lead to a Denial of Service.
An OBJECT IDENTIFIER is composed of a series of numbers - sub-identifiers - most of which have no size limit. OBJ_obj2txt() may be used to translate an ASN.1 OBJECT IDENTIFIER given in DER encoding form (using the OpenSSL type ASN1_OBJECT) to its canonical numeric text form, which are the sub-identifiers of the OBJECT IDENTIFIER in decimal form, separated by periods.
When one of the sub-identifiers in the OBJECT IDENTIFIER is very large (these are sizes that are seen as absurdly large, taking up tens or hundreds of KiBs), the translation to a decimal number in text may take a very long time. The time complexity is O(n^2) with 'n' being the size of the sub-identifiers in bytes (*).
With OpenSSL 3.0, support to fetch cryptographic algorithms using names / identifiers in string form was introduced. This includes using OBJECT IDENTIFIERs in canonical numeric text form as identifiers for fetching algorithms.
Such OBJECT IDENTIFIERs may be received through the ASN.1 structure AlgorithmIdentifier, which is commonly used in multiple protocols to specify what cryptographic algorithm should be used to sign or verify, encrypt or decrypt, or digest passed data.
Applications that call OBJ_obj2txt() directly with untrusted data are affected, with any version of OpenSSL. If the use is for the mere purpose of display, the severity is considered low.
In OpenSSL 3.0 and newer, this affects the subsystems OCSP, PKCS7/SMIME, CMS, CMP/CRMF or TS. It also impacts anything that processes X.509 certificates, including simple things like verifying its signature.
The impact on TLS is relatively low, because all versions of OpenSSL have a 100KiB limit on the peer's certificate chain. Additionally, this only impacts clients, or servers that have explicitly enabled client authentication.
In OpenSSL 1.1.1 and 1.0.2, this only affects displaying diverse objects, such as X.509 certificates. This is assumed to not happen in such a way that it would cause a Denial of Service, so these versions are considered not affected by this issue in such a way that it would be cause for concern, and the severity is therefore considered low.
Found by OSSFuzz. Found by Matt Caswell. Fix developed by Richard Levitte.
CVE-2023-0465 Invalid certificate policies in leaf certificates are silently ignored [Low severity] 23 March 2023:
Applications that use a non-default option when verifying certificates may be vulnerable to an attack from a malicious CA to circumvent certain checks.
Invalid certificate policies in leaf certificates are silently ignored by OpenSSL and other certificate policy checks are skipped for that certificate. A malicious CA could use this to deliberately assert invalid certificate policies in order to circumvent policy checking on the certificate altogether.
Policy processing is disabled by default but can be enabled by passing the `-policy` argument to the command line utilities or by calling the `X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_policies()` function.
Found by David Benjamin (Google). Fix developed by Matt Caswell.
CVE-2023-1255 Input buffer over-read in AES-XTS implementation on 64 bit ARM [Low severity] 21 March 2023:
Issue summary: The AES-XTS cipher decryption implementation for 64 bit ARM platform contains a bug that could cause it to read past the input buffer, leading to a crash.
Impact summary: Applications that use the AES-XTS algorithm on the 64 bit ARM platform can crash in rare circumstances. The AES-XTS algorithm is usually used for disk encryption.
The AES-XTS cipher decryption implementation for 64 bit ARM platform will read past the end of the ciphertext buffer if the ciphertext size is 4 mod 5 in 16 byte blocks, e.g. 144 bytes or 1024 bytes. If the memory after the ciphertext buffer is unmapped, this will trigger a crash which results in a denial of service.
If an attacker can control the size and location of the ciphertext buffer being decrypted by an application using AES-XTS on 64 bit ARM, the application is affected. This is fairly unlikely making this issue a Low severity one.
Found by Anton Romanov (Amazon). Fix developed by Nevine Ebeid (Amazon).
  • Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.9 (git commit) (Affected since 3.0.0)
  • This issue was also addressed in OpenSSL 3.1.1
CVE-2023-0466 Certificate policy check not enabled [Low severity] 21 March 2023:
The function X509_VERIFY_PARAM_add0_policy() is documented to implicitly enable the certificate policy check when doing certificate verification. However the implementation of the function does not enable the check which allows certificates with invalid or incorrect policies to pass the certificate verification.
As suddenly enabling the policy check could break existing deployments it was decided to keep the existing behavior of the X509_VERIFY_PARAM_add0_policy() function.
Instead the applications that require OpenSSL to perform certificate policy check need to use X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_policies() or explicitly enable the policy check by calling X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set_flags() with the X509_V_FLAG_POLICY_CHECK flag argument.
Certificate policy checks are disabled by default in OpenSSL and are not commonly used by applications.
Found by David Benjamin (Google). Fix developed by Tomas Mraz.
CVE-2023-0464 Excessive Resource Usage Verifying X.509 Policy Constraints [Low severity] 21 March 2023:
A security vulnerability has been identified in all supported versions
of OpenSSL related to the verification of X.509 certificate chains that include policy constraints. Attackers may be able to exploit this vulnerability by creating a malicious certificate chain that triggers exponential use of computational resources, leading to a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on affected systems.
Policy processing is disabled by default but can be enabled by passing the `-policy` argument to the command line utilities or by calling the `X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_policies()` function.
Found by David Benjamin (Google). Fix developed by Dr Paul Dale.
CVE-2023-0401 NULL dereference during PKCS7 data verification [Moderate severity] 07 February 2023:
A NULL pointer can be dereferenced when signatures are being verified on PKCS7 signed or signedAndEnveloped data. In case the hash algorithm used for the signature is known to the OpenSSL library but the implementation of the hash algorithm is not available the digest initialization will fail. There is a missing check for the return value from the initialization function which later leads to invalid usage of the digest API most likely leading to a crash.
The unavailability of an algorithm can be caused by using FIPS enabled configuration of providers or more commonly by not loading the legacy provider.
PKCS7 data is processed by the SMIME library calls and also by the time stamp (TS) library calls. The TLS implementation in OpenSSL does not call these functions however third party applications would be affected if they call these functions to verify signatures on untrusted data.
Found by Hubert Kario (Red Hat). Found by Dmitry Belyavsky (Red Hat). Fix developed by Tomáš Mráz.
CVE-2023-0286 X.400 address type confusion in X.509 GeneralName [High severity] 07 February 2023:
There is a type confusion vulnerability relating to X.400 address processing inside an X.509 GeneralName. X.400 addresses were parsed as an ASN1_STRING but the public structure definition for GENERAL_NAME incorrectly specified the type of the x400Address field as ASN1_TYPE. This field is subsequently interpreted by the OpenSSL function GENERAL_NAME_cmp as an ASN1_TYPE rather than an ASN1_STRING.
When CRL checking is enabled (i.e. the application sets the X509_V_FLAG_CRL_CHECK flag), this vulnerability may allow an attacker to pass arbitrary pointers to a memcmp call, enabling them to read memory contents or enact a denial of service. In most cases, the attack requires the attacker to provide both the certificate chain and CRL, neither of which need to have a valid signature. If the attacker only controls one of these inputs, the other input must already contain an X.400 address as a CRL distribution point, which is uncommon. As such, this vulnerability is most likely to only affect applications which have implemented their own functionality for retrieving CRLs over a network.
Found by David Benjamin (Google). Fix developed by Hugo Landau.
CVE-2023-0217 NULL dereference validating DSA public key [Moderate severity] 07 February 2023:
An invalid pointer dereference on read can be triggered when an application tries to check a malformed DSA public key by the EVP_PKEY_public_check() function. This will most likely lead to an application crash. This function can be called on public keys supplied from untrusted sources which could allow an attacker to cause a denial of service attack.
The TLS implementation in OpenSSL does not call this function but applications might call the function if there are additional security requirements imposed by standards such as FIPS 140-3.
Found by Kurt Roeckx. Fix developed by Shane Lontis from Oracle.
CVE-2023-0216 Invalid pointer dereference in d2i_PKCS7 functions [Moderate severity] 07 February 2023:
An invalid pointer dereference on read can be triggered when an application tries to load malformed PKCS7 data with the d2i_PKCS7(), d2i_PKCS7_bio() or d2i_PKCS7_fp() functions.
The result of the dereference is an application crash which could lead to a denial of service attack. The TLS implementation in OpenSSL does not call this function however third party applications might call these functions on untrusted data.
Found by Marc Schönefeld. Fix developed by Tomáš Mráz.
CVE-2023-0215 Use-after-free following BIO_new_NDEF [Moderate severity] 07 February 2023:
The public API function BIO_new_NDEF is a helper function used for streaming ASN.1 data via a BIO. It is primarily used internally to OpenSSL to support the SMIME, CMS and PKCS7 streaming capabilities, but may also be called directly by end user applications.
The function receives a BIO from the caller, prepends a new BIO_f_asn1 filter BIO onto the front of it to form a BIO chain, and then returns the new head of the BIO chain to the caller. Under certain conditions, for example if a CMS recipient public key is invalid, the new filter BIO is freed and the function returns a NULL result indicating a failure. However, in this case, the BIO chain is not properly cleaned up and the BIO passed by the caller still retains internal pointers to the previously freed filter BIO. If the caller then goes on to call BIO_pop() on the BIO then a use-after-free will occur. This will most likely result in a crash.
This scenario occurs directly in the internal function B64_write_ASN1() which may cause BIO_new_NDEF() to be called and will subsequently call BIO_pop() on the BIO. This internal function is in turn called by the public API functions PEM_write_bio_ASN1_stream, PEM_write_bio_CMS_stream, PEM_write_bio_PKCS7_stream, SMIME_write_ASN1, SMIME_write_CMS and SMIME_write_PKCS7.
Other public API functions that may be impacted by this include i2d_ASN1_bio_stream, BIO_new_CMS, BIO_new_PKCS7, i2d_CMS_bio_stream and i2d_PKCS7_bio_stream.
The OpenSSL cms and smime command line applications are similarly affected.
Found by Octavio Galland (Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy). Found by Marcel Böhme (Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy). Fix developed by Viktor Dukhovni. Fix developed by Matt Caswell.
CVE-2022-4450 Double free after calling PEM_read_bio_ex [Moderate severity] 07 February 2023:
The function PEM_read_bio_ex() reads a PEM file from a BIO and parses and decodes the "name" (e.g. "CERTIFICATE"), any header data and the payload data. If the function succeeds then the "name_out", "header" and "data" arguments are populated with pointers to buffers containing the relevant decoded data. The caller is responsible for freeing those buffers. It is possible to construct a PEM file that results in 0 bytes of payload data. In this case PEM_read_bio_ex() will return a failure code but will populate the header argument with a pointer to a buffer that has already been freed. If the caller also frees this buffer then a double free will occur. This will most likely lead to a crash. This could be exploited by an attacker who has the ability to supply malicious PEM files for parsing to achieve a denial of service attack.
The functions PEM_read_bio() and PEM_read() are simple wrappers around PEM_read_bio_ex() and therefore these functions are also directly affected.
These functions are also called indirectly by a number of other OpenSSL functions including PEM_X509_INFO_read_bio_ex() and SSL_CTX_use_serverinfo_file() which are also vulnerable. Some OpenSSL internal uses of these functions are not vulnerable because the caller does not free the header argument if PEM_read_bio_ex() returns a failure code. These locations include the PEM_read_bio_TYPE() functions as well as the decoders introduced in OpenSSL 3.0.
The OpenSSL asn1parse command line application is also impacted by this issue.
Found by CarpetFuzz. Found by Dawei Wang. Found by Marc Schönefeld. Fix developed by Kurt Roeckx. Fix developed by Matt Caswell.
  • Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.8 (git commit) (Affected since 3.0.0)
  • This issue was also addressed in OpenSSL 1.1.1t
CVE-2022-4304 Timing Oracle in RSA Decryption [Moderate severity] 07 February 2023:
A timing based side channel exists in the OpenSSL RSA Decryption implementation which could be sufficient to recover a plaintext across a network in a Bleichenbacher style attack. To achieve a successful decryption an attacker would have to be able to send a very large number of trial messages for decryption. The vulnerability affects all RSA padding modes: PKCS#1 v1.5, RSA-OEAP and RSASVE.
For example, in a TLS connection, RSA is commonly used by a client to send an encrypted pre-master secret to the server. An attacker that had observed a genuine connection between a client and a server could use this flaw to send trial messages to the server and record the time taken to process them. After a sufficiently large number of messages the attacker could recover the pre-master secret used for the original connection and thus be able to decrypt the application data sent over that connection.
Found by Hubert Kario from Red Hat. Fix developed by Dmitry Belyavsky from Red Hat. Fix developed by Hubert Kario from Red Hat.
CVE-2022-4203 X.509 Name Constraints Read Buffer Overflow [Moderate severity] 07 February 2023:
A read buffer overrun can be triggered in X.509 certificate verification, specifically in name constraint checking. Note that this occurs after certificate chain signature verification and requires either a CA to have signed the malicious certificate or for the application to continue certificate verification despite failure to construct a path to a trusted issuer.
The read buffer overrun might result in a crash which could lead to a denial of service attack. In theory it could also result in the disclosure of private memory contents (such as private keys, or sensitive plaintext) although we are not aware of any working exploit leading to memory contents disclosure as of the time of release of this advisory.
In a TLS client, this can be triggered by connecting to a malicious server. In a TLS server, this can be triggered if the server requests client authentication and a malicious client connects.
Found by Corey Bonnell from Digicert. Fix developed by Viktor Dukhovni.

2022

CVE-2022-3996 X.509 Policy Constraints Double Locking [Low severity] 13 December 2022:
If an X.509 certificate contains a malformed policy constraint and policy processing is enabled, then a write lock will be taken twice recursively. On some operating systems (most widely: Windows) this results in a denial of service when the affected process hangs. Policy processing being enabled on a publicly facing server is not considered to be a common setup.
Policy processing is enabled by passing the `-policy` argument to the command line utilities or by calling the `X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_policies()` function.
Update (31 March 2023): The description of the policy processing enablement was corrected based on CVE-2023-0466.
Found by Polar Bear. Fix developed by Paul Dale.
CVE-2022-3786 X.509 Email Address Variable Length Buffer Overflow [High severity] 01 November 2022:
A buffer overrun can be triggered in X.509 certificate verification, specifically in name constraint checking. Note that this occurs after certificate chain signature verification and requires either a CA to have signed a malicious certificate or for an application to continue certificate verification despite failure to construct a path to a trusted issuer. An attacker can craft a malicious email address in a certificate to overflow an arbitrary number of bytes containing the '.' character (decimal 46) on the stack. This buffer overflow could result in a crash (causing a denial of service). In a TLS client, this can be triggered by connecting to a malicious server. In a TLS server, this can be triggered if the server requests client authentication and a malicious client connects.
Found by Viktor Dukhovni.
CVE-2022-3602 X.509 Email Address 4-byte Buffer Overflow [High severity] 01 November 2022:
A buffer overrun can be triggered in X.509 certificate verification, specifically in name constraint checking. Note that this occurs after certificate chain signature verification and requires either a CA to have signed the malicious certificate or for the application to continue certificate verification despite failure to construct a path to a trusted issuer. An attacker can craft a malicious email address to overflow four attacker-controlled bytes on the stack. This buffer overflow could result in a crash (causing a denial of service) or potentially remote code execution. Many platforms implement stack overflow protections which would mitigate against the risk of remote code execution. The risk may be further mitigated based on stack layout for any given platform/compiler. Pre-announcements of CVE-2022-3602 described this issue as CRITICAL. Further analysis based on some of the mitigating factors described above have led this to be downgraded to HIGH. Users are still encouraged to upgrade to a new version as soon as possible. In a TLS client, this can be triggered by connecting to a malicious server. In a TLS server, this can be triggered if the server requests client authentication and a malicious client connects.
Found by Polar Bear.
CVE-2022-3358 Using a Custom Cipher with NID_undef may lead to NULL encryption [Low severity] 29 September 2022:
OpenSSL supports creating a custom cipher via the legacy EVP_CIPHER_meth_new() function and associated function calls. This function was deprecated in OpenSSL 3.0 and application authors are instead encouraged to use the new provider mechanism in order to implement custom ciphers. OpenSSL versions 3.0.0 to 3.0.5 incorrectly handle legacy custom ciphers passed to the EVP_EncryptInit_ex2(), EVP_DecryptInit_ex2() and EVP_CipherInit_ex2() functions (as well as other similarly named encryption and decryption initialisation functions). Instead of using the custom cipher directly it incorrectly tries to fetch an equivalent cipher from the available providers. An equivalent cipher is found based on the NID passed to EVP_CIPHER_meth_new(). This NID is supposed to represent the unique NID for a given cipher. However it is possible for an application to incorrectly pass NID_undef as this value in the call to EVP_CIPHER_meth_new(). When NID_undef is used in this way the OpenSSL encryption/decryption initialisation function will match the NULL cipher as being equivalent and will fetch this from the available providers. This will succeed if the default provider has been loaded (or if a third party provider has been loaded that offers this cipher). Using the NULL cipher means that the plaintext is emitted as the ciphertext. Applications are only affected by this issue if they call EVP_CIPHER_meth_new() using NID_undef and subsequently use it in a call to an encryption/decryption initialisation function. Applications that only use SSL/TLS are not impacted by this issue.
Found by Chris Rapier (Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center).
CVE-2022-2274 Bug in RSA implementation for AVX512IFMA capable CPUs [High severity] 05 July 2022:
The OpenSSL 3.0.4 release introduced a serious bug in the RSA implementation for X86_64 CPUs supporting the AVX512IFMA instructions. This issue makes the RSA implementation with 2048 bit private keys incorrect on such machines and memory corruption will happen during the computation. As a consequence of the memory corruption an attacker may be able to trigger a remote code execution on the machine performing the computation. SSL/TLS servers or other servers using 2048 bit RSA private keys running on machines supporting AVX512IFMA instructions of the X86_64 architecture are affected by this issue.
Found by Xi Ruoyao.
CVE-2022-2097 AES OCB fails to encrypt some bytes [Moderate severity] 05 July 2022:
AES OCB mode for 32-bit x86 platforms using the AES-NI assembly optimised implementation will not encrypt the entirety of the data under some circumstances. This could reveal sixteen bytes of data that was preexisting in the memory that wasn't written. In the special case of "in place" encryption, sixteen bytes of the plaintext would be revealed. Since OpenSSL does not support OCB based cipher suites for TLS and DTLS, they are both unaffected.
Found by Alex Chernyakhovsky.
  • Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.5 (git commit) (Affected since 3.0.0)
  • This issue was also addressed in OpenSSL 1.1.1q
CVE-2022-2068 The c_rehash script allows command injection [Moderate severity] 21 June 2022:
In addition to the c_rehash shell command injection identified in CVE-2022-1292, further circumstances where the c_rehash script does not properly sanitise shell metacharacters to prevent command injection were found by code review. When the CVE-2022-1292 was fixed it was not discovered that there are other places in the script where the file names of certificates being hashed were possibly passed to a command executed through the shell. This script is distributed by some operating systems in a manner where it is automatically executed. On such operating systems, an attacker could execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the script. Use of the c_rehash script is considered obsolete and should be replaced by the OpenSSL rehash command line tool.
Found by Chancen (Qingteng 73lab).
CVE-2022-1473 Resource leakage when decoding certificates and keys [Low severity] 03 May 2022:
The OPENSSL_LH_flush() function, which empties a hash table, contains a bug that breaks reuse of the memory occuppied by the removed hash table entries. This function is used when decoding certificates or keys. If a long lived process periodically decodes certificates or keys its memory usage will expand without bounds and the process might be terminated by the operating system causing a denial of service. Also traversing the empty hash table entries will take increasingly more time. Typically such long lived processes might be TLS clients or TLS servers configured to accept client certificate authentication. The function was added in the OpenSSL 3.0 version thus older releases are not affected by the issue.
Found by Aliaksei Levin.
CVE-2022-1434 Incorrect MAC key used in the RC4-MD5 ciphersuite [Low severity] 03 May 2022:
The OpenSSL 3.0 implementation of the RC4-MD5 ciphersuite incorrectly uses the AAD data as the MAC key. This makes the MAC key trivially predictable. An attacker could exploit this issue by performing a man-in-the-middle attack to modify data being sent from one endpoint to an OpenSSL 3.0 recipient such that the modified data would still pass the MAC integrity check. Note that data sent from an OpenSSL 3.0 endpoint to a non-OpenSSL 3.0 endpoint will always be rejected by the recipient and the connection will fail at that point. Many application protocols require data to be sent from the client to the server first. Therefore, in such a case, only an OpenSSL 3.0 server would be impacted when talking to a non-OpenSSL 3.0 client. If both endpoints are OpenSSL 3.0 then the attacker could modify data being sent in both directions. In this case both clients and servers could be affected, regardless of the application protocol. Note that in the absence of an attacker this bug means that an OpenSSL 3.0 endpoint communicating with a non-OpenSSL 3.0 endpoint will fail to complete the handshake when using this ciphersuite. The confidentiality of data is not impacted by this issue, i.e. an attacker cannot decrypt data that has been encrypted using this ciphersuite - they can only modify it. In order for this attack to work both endpoints must legitimately negotiate the RC4-MD5 ciphersuite. This ciphersuite is not compiled by default in OpenSSL 3.0, and is not available within the default provider or the default ciphersuite list. This ciphersuite will never be used if TLSv1.3 has been negotiated. In order for an OpenSSL 3.0 endpoint to use this ciphersuite the following must have occurred: 1) OpenSSL must have been compiled with the (non-default) compile time option enable-weak-ssl-ciphers 2) OpenSSL must have had the legacy provider explicitly loaded (either through application code or via configuration) 3) The ciphersuite must have been explicitly added to the ciphersuite list 4) The libssl security level must have been set to 0 (default is 1) 5) A version of SSL/TLS below TLSv1.3 must have been negotiated 6) Both endpoints must negotiate the RC4-MD5 ciphersuite in preference to any others that both endpoints have in common.
Found by Tom Colley (Broadcom).
CVE-2022-1343 OCSP_basic_verify may incorrectly verify the response signing certificate [Moderate severity] 03 May 2022:
The function `OCSP_basic_verify` verifies the signer certificate on an OCSP response. In the case where the (non-default) flag OCSP_NOCHECKS is used then the response will be positive (meaning a successful verification) even in the case where the response signing certificate fails to verify. It is anticipated that most users of `OCSP_basic_verify` will not use the OCSP_NOCHECKS flag. In this case the `OCSP_basic_verify` function will return a negative value (indicating a fatal error) in the case of a certificate verification failure. The normal expected return value in this case would be 0. This issue also impacts the command line OpenSSL "ocsp" application. When verifying an ocsp response with the "-no_cert_checks" option the command line application will report that the verification is successful even though it has in fact failed. In this case the incorrect successful response will also be accompanied by error messages showing the failure and contradicting the apparently successful result.
Found by Raul Metsma.
CVE-2022-1292 The c_rehash script allows command injection [Moderate severity] 03 May 2022:
The c_rehash script does not properly sanitise shell metacharacters to prevent command injection. This script is distributed by some operating systems in a manner where it is automatically executed. On such operating systems, an attacker could execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the script. Use of the c_rehash script is considered obsolete and should be replaced by the OpenSSL rehash command line tool.
Found by Elison Niven (Sophos).
CVE-2022-0778 Infinite loop in BN_mod_sqrt() reachable when parsing certificates [High severity] 15 March 2022:
The BN_mod_sqrt() function, which computes a modular square root, contains a bug that can cause it to loop forever for non-prime moduli. Internally this function is used when parsing certificates that contain elliptic curve public keys in compressed form or explicit elliptic curve parameters with a base point encoded in compressed form. It is possible to trigger the infinite loop by crafting a certificate that has invalid explicit curve parameters. Since certificate parsing happens prior to verification of the certificate signature, any process that parses an externally supplied certificate may thus be subject to a denial of service attack. The infinite loop can also be reached when parsing crafted private keys as they can contain explicit elliptic curve parameters. Thus vulnerable situations include: - TLS clients consuming server certificates - TLS servers consuming client certificates - Hosting providers taking certificates or private keys from customers - Certificate authorities parsing certification requests from subscribers - Anything else which parses ASN.1 elliptic curve parameters Also any other applications that use the BN_mod_sqrt() where the attacker can control the parameter values are vulnerable to this DoS issue. In the OpenSSL 1.0.2 version the public key is not parsed during initial parsing of the certificate which makes it slightly harder to trigger the infinite loop. However any operation which requires the public key from the certificate will trigger the infinite loop. In particular the attacker can use a self-signed certificate to trigger the loop during verification of the certificate signature. This issue affects OpenSSL versions 1.0.2, 1.1.1 and 3.0. It was addressed in the releases of 1.1.1n and 3.0.2 on the 15th March 2022.
Found by Tavis Ormandy (Google).
CVE-2021-4160 BN_mod_exp may produce incorrect results on MIPS [Moderate severity] 28 January 2022:
There is a carry propagation bug in the MIPS32 and MIPS64 squaring procedure. Many EC algorithms are affected, including some of the TLS 1.3 default curves. Impact was not analyzed in detail, because the pre-requisites for attack are considered unlikely and include reusing private keys. Analysis suggests that attacks against RSA and DSA as a result of this defect would be very difficult to perform and are not believed likely. Attacks against DH are considered just feasible (although very difficult) because most of the work necessary to deduce information about a private key may be performed offline. The amount of resources required for such an attack would be significant. However, for an attack on TLS to be meaningful, the server would have to share the DH private key among multiple clients, which is no longer an option since CVE-2016-0701. This issue affects OpenSSL versions 1.0.2, 1.1.1 and 3.0.0. It was addressed in the releases of 1.1.1m and 3.0.1 on the 15th of December 2021, and the release of 1.0.2zc on the 22nd of February 2022. The issue only affects OpenSSL on MIPS platforms.
Found by Bernd Edlinger.

2021

CVE-2021-4044 Invalid handling of X509_verify_cert() internal errors in libssl [Moderate severity] 14 December 2021:
Internally libssl in OpenSSL calls X509_verify_cert() on the client side to verify a certificate supplied by a server. That function may return a negative return value to indicate an internal error (for example out of memory). Such a negative return value is mishandled by OpenSSL and will cause an IO function (such as SSL_connect() or SSL_do_handshake()) to not indicate success and a subsequent call to SSL_get_error() to return the value SSL_ERROR_WANT_RETRY_VERIFY. This return value is only supposed to be returned by OpenSSL if the application has previously called SSL_CTX_set_cert_verify_callback(). Since most applications do not do this the SSL_ERROR_WANT_RETRY_VERIFY return value from SSL_get_error() will be totally unexpected and applications may not behave correctly as a result. The exact behaviour will depend on the application but it could result in crashes, infinite loops or other similar incorrect responses. This issue is made more serious in combination with a separate bug in OpenSSL 3.0 that will cause X509_verify_cert() to indicate an internal error when processing a certificate chain. This will occur where a certificate does not include the Subject Alternative Name extension but where a Certificate Authority has enforced name constraints. This issue can occur even with valid chains. By combining the two issues an attacker could induce incorrect, application dependent behaviour.
Found by Tobias Nießen.