CVE-2023-6237

Excessive time spent checking invalid RSA public keys

State
Published
Severity
5.9 Medium
Published
Apr 25, 2024
Updated
Oct 14, 2026
Reserved
Nov 21, 2023

Read the record on cve.org

Description

Issue summary: Checking excessively long invalid RSA public keys may take a long time.

Impact summary: Applications that use the function EVP_PKEY_public_check() to check RSA public keys may experience long delays. Where the key that is being checked has been obtained from an untrusted source this may lead to a Denial of Service.

When function EVP_PKEY_public_check() is called on RSA public keys, a computation is done to confirm that the RSA modulus, n, is composite. For valid RSA keys, n is a product of two or more large primes and this computation completes quickly. However, if n is an overly large prime, then this computation would take a long time.

An application that calls EVP_PKEY_public_check() and supplies an RSA key obtained from an untrusted source could be vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack.

The function EVP_PKEY_public_check() is not called from other OpenSSL functions however it is called from the OpenSSL pkey command line application. For that reason that application is also vulnerable if used with the '-pubin' and '-check' options on untrusted data.

The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected by this issue.

The OpenSSL 3.0 and 3.1 FIPS providers are affected by this issue.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.15.9 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCISA-ADP

Weaknesses

  • CWE-606 Unchecked Input for Loop Condition

Affected Products

ProductVersions
OpenSSLOpenSSL
  • 3.0.0 to before 3.0.13Affected
  • 3.1.0 to before 3.1.5Affected
  • 3.2.0 to before 3.2.1Affected

References

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