CVE-2024-0727

Technical Description

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 significan

Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories and patches from openssl. Update openssl to the latest patched version. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

Affected Products

References