OpenSSL has launched a series of security patches to resolve twelve distinct vulnerabilities found within its open-source cryptographic library. The most significant of these updates addresses high-severity flaws that could allow an attacker to execute remote code or cause a complete system denial of service.
The security researchers at Aisle identified these vulnerabilities, which primarily stem from issues with memory safety and how the library handles complex data parsing. Many of the discovered bugs involve stack and heap overflows, specifically within the PKCS#12 and CMS parsing components. Other identified problems include pointer dereferences and type-confusion errors in protocols like ASN.1 and QUIC, alongside logic errors in the command-line interface that could prevent large inputs from being properly authenticated.
Among the twelve flaws, two stand out due to their potential impact on system integrity. The first is a stack overflow vulnerability in the CMS parsing logic where an oversized initialization vector can bypass standard checks and crash the service or allow for malicious code execution. This particular issue affects users of OpenSSL versions 3.0 through 3.6 when processing untrusted data. The second major flaw involves a validation error in the PKCS#12 password-based MAC verification process, where manipulated parameters can overflow a small fixed buffer on the stack.
Beyond these high-severity concerns, the update also mitigates several issues categorized as low severity. These minor flaws generally relate to resource exhaustion or integrity gaps in specific, narrower scenarios such as legacy certificate handling and time-stamping services. While these do not pose the same level of risk as the remote code execution vulnerabilities, they could still be exploited to trigger denial of service attacks in certain environments.
Security professionals recommend that administrators and developers using OpenSSL 3.0 or later apply these updates immediately to protect their infrastructure. By upgrading to the patched versions, organizations can ensure that their cryptographic operations remain resilient against these newly discovered memory corruption and parsing exploits. The release of these fixes underscores the ongoing effort to harden open-source encryption tools against sophisticated modern threats.
Source: OpenSSL Releases Updates Fixing 12 Flaws Including Remote Code Execution