If an X.509 certificate contains a malformed policy constraint and policy processing is enabled, then a write lock will be taken twice recursively. On some operating systems (most widely: Windows) this results in a denial of service when the affected process hangs. Policy processing being enabled on a publicly facing server is not considered to be a common setup. Policy processing is enabled by passing the `-policy' argument to the command line utilities or by calling the `X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_policies()' function. Update (31 March 2023): The description of the policy processing enablement was corrected based on CVE-2023-0466.
https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv/20221213.txt
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/7725e7bfe6f2ce8146b6552b44e0d226be7638e7
Published: 2022-12-13
Updated: 2024-08-01
Base Score: 7.8
Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C
Severity: High
Base Score: 7.5
Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Severity: High
Base Score: 9.3
Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Severity: Critical