CVE-2024-9143

Technical Description

Issue summary: Use of the low-level GF(2^m) elliptic curve APIs with untrusted

explicit values for the field polynomial can lead to out-of-bounds memory reads

or writes.

Impact summary: Out of bound memory writes can lead to an application crash or

even a possibility of a remote code execution, however, in all the protocols

involving Elliptic Curve Cryptography that we're aware of, either only "named

curves" are supported, or, if explicit curve parameters are supported, they

specify an X9.62 encoding of binary (GF(2^m)) curves that can't represent

problematic input values. Thus the likelihood of existence of a vulnerable

application is low.

In particular, the X9.62 encoding is used for ECC keys in X.509 certificates,

so problematic inputs cannot occur in the context of processing X.509

certificates. Any problematic use-cases would have to be using an "exotic"

curve encoding.

The affected APIs include: EC_GROUP_new_curve_GF2m(), EC_GROUP_new_from_params(),

and various supporting BN_

Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories, patches, and mitigation guidance. 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.

References