OpenSSL 3.0.0 < 3.0.6 Vulnerability

high Nessus Plugin ID 166047

Synopsis

The remote service is affected by a vulnerability.

Description

The version of OpenSSL installed on the remote host is prior to 3.0.6. It is, therefore, affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the 3.0.6 advisory.

- OpenSSL supports creating a custom cipher via the legacy EVP_CIPHER_meth_new() function and associated function calls. This function was deprecated in OpenSSL 3.0 and application authors are instead encouraged to use the new provider mechanism in order to implement custom ciphers. OpenSSL versions 3.0.0 to 3.0.5 incorrectly handle legacy custom ciphers passed to the EVP_EncryptInit_ex2(), EVP_DecryptInit_ex2() and EVP_CipherInit_ex2() functions (as well as other similarly named encryption and decryption initialisation functions). Instead of using the custom cipher directly it incorrectly tries to fetch an equivalent cipher from the available providers. An equivalent cipher is found based on the NID passed to EVP_CIPHER_meth_new(). This NID is supposed to represent the unique NID for a given cipher. However it is possible for an application to incorrectly pass NID_undef as this value in the call to EVP_CIPHER_meth_new(). When NID_undef is used in this way the OpenSSL encryption/decryption initialisation function will match the NULL cipher as being equivalent and will fetch this from the available providers.
This will succeed if the default provider has been loaded (or if a third party provider has been loaded that offers this cipher). Using the NULL cipher means that the plaintext is emitted as the ciphertext.
Applications are only affected by this issue if they call EVP_CIPHER_meth_new() using NID_undef and subsequently use it in a call to an encryption/decryption initialisation function. Applications that only use SSL/TLS are not impacted by this issue. Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.6 (Affected 3.0.0-3.0.5). (CVE-2022-3358)

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Upgrade to OpenSSL version 3.0.6 or later.

See Also

https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-3358

http://www.nessus.org/u?ca4894f6

https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv/20221011.txt

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 166047

File Name: openssl_3_0_6.nasl

Version: 1.14

Type: combined

Agent: windows, macosx, unix

Family: Web Servers

Published: 10/11/2022

Updated: 10/23/2024

Configuration: Enable thorough checks

Supported Sensors: Continuous Assessment, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.6

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 5.8

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:N/A:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2022-3358

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 6.5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/a:openssl:openssl

Required KB Items: installed_sw/OpenSSL

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 9/29/2022

Vulnerability Publication Date: 9/29/2022

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2022-3358

IAVA: 2022-A-0415-S