CVE Catalog

CVE-2023-3446

MediumCVSS 5.3
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Very high risk
5.53%

92th percentile - higher than 92% of all known CVEs

Summary

The issue is that checking excessively long DH keys or parameters may be very slow. Applications using the functions DH_check(), DH_check_ex(), or EVP_PKEY_param_check() may experience long delays, which could lead to a Denial of Service attack if the keys or parameters are obtained from an untrusted source.

Risk Assessment

Organizations may be vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks if applications use DH keys or parameters from untrusted sources. Long response delays could disrupt service availability.

Recommendation

It is recommended to avoid using DH keys or parameters from untrusted sources and to implement additional verification mechanisms to minimize the risk of an attack.

Original NVD description (English source)

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.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS