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OpenSSLFramework / library

CVE-2023-5363

HIGH · 7.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2023-10-25
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to 3.0.12 / 3.1.4 or later.
See remediation →
84/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
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.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis

A detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
OpenSSLFramework / library
Affected:>= 3.0.0, < 3.0.12>= 3.1.0, < 3.1.4
Debian LinuxOperating system
Affected:= 12.0
H300s FirmwareOperating system
Affected:all versions
H410s FirmwareOperating system
Affected:all versions
H500s FirmwareOperating system
Affected:all versions
H700s FirmwareOperating system
Affected:all versions
H410c FirmwareOperating system
Affected:all versions

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to 3.0.12 / 3.1.4 or later
Fixed in 3.0.123.1.4
Vendor patch git.openssl.org →
Recommended fix High confidence

OpenSSL 3.0.12 (for 3.0.x branch) or OpenSSL 3.1.4 (for 3.1.x branch)

  1. Identify the currently installed OpenSSL version using 'openssl version' or 'dpkg -l | grep openssl'
  2. For Debian 12.0 systems, apply security updates via 'apt update && apt upgrade' to get the fixed openssl package (3.1.4-0+deb12u1 or later)
  3. For other Linux distributions, use the appropriate package manager (yum, dnf, apt, zypper) to upgrade openssl to version 3.0.12 (for 3.0.x branches) or 3.1.4 (for 3.1.x branches)
  4. For embedded devices (H300s, H410s, H500s, H700s, H410c firmware), contact the device vendor for firmware updates containing the OpenSSL patch
  5. After upgrade, verify the fix by running 'openssl version' and confirming it shows 3.0.12 or 3.1.4 or later
  6. Test that applications using affected ciphers (RC2, RC4, RC5, CCM, GCM, OCB) function correctly post-upgrade
Caveat Applications using the vulnerable EVP_*Init_ex2() API with OSSL_PARAM keylen/ivlen changes will need retesting as behavior may differ; FIPS provider not affected so FIPS users are not impacted

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2023-5363 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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