Bug 2430379 (CVE-2025-66199)

Summary: CVE-2025-66199 openssl: OpenSSL: Denial of Service due to excessive memory allocation in TLS 1.3 certificate compression
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: unspecifiedCC: csutherl, jclere, pjindal, plodge, security-response-team, szappis, vchlup
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: ---
Doc Text:
A flaw was found in OpenSSL. A remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability by sending a specially crafted CompressedCertificate message during the TLS 1.3 handshake. This can cause excessive per-connection memory allocations, leading to resource exhaustion and a Denial of Service (DoS) for affected clients and servers. This issue occurs when TLS 1.3 certificate compression is enabled and negotiated.
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On: 2457223, 2457224, 2457225, 2457226, 2457227    
Bug Blocks:    
Deadline: 2026-01-27   

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-01-16 14:31:51 UTC
An attacker can cause per-connection memory allocations of
up to approximately 22 MiB and extra CPU work, potentially leading to
service degradation or resource exhaustion (Denial of Service).

In affected configurations, the peer-supplied uncompressed certificate
length from a CompressedCertificate message is used to grow a heap buffer
prior to decompression. This length is not bounded by the max_cert_list
setting, which otherwise constrains certificate message sizes. An attacker
can exploit this to cause large per-connection allocations followed by
handshake failure. No memory corruption or information disclosure occurs.

This issue only affects builds where TLS 1.3 certificate compression is
compiled in (i.e., not OPENSSL_NO_COMP_ALG) and at least one compression
algorithm (brotli, zlib, or zstd) is available, and where the compression
extension is negotiated. Both clients receiving a server CompressedCertificate
and servers in mutual TLS scenarios receiving a client CompressedCertificate
are affected. Servers that do not request client certificates are not
vulnerable to client-initiated attacks.

Users can mitigate this issue by setting SSL_OP_NO_RX_CERTIFICATE_COMPRESSION
to disable receiving compressed certificates.

The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4 and 3.3 are not affected by this issue,
as the TLS implementation is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

OpenSSL 3.6, 3.5, 3.4 and 3.3 are vulnerable to this issue.

OpenSSL 3.0, 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 are not affected by this issue.

OpenSSL 3.6 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.6.1.

OpenSSL 3.5 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.5.5.

OpenSSL 3.4 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.4.4.

OpenSSL 3.3 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.3.6.

Comment 2 Jean-frederic Clere 2026-01-19 09:37:25 UTC
https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_ssl.html#sslcompression
default off

Comment 3 errata-xmlrpc 2026-01-28 08:57:16 UTC
This issue has been addressed in the following products:

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10

Via RHSA-2026:1472 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:1472

Comment 4 errata-xmlrpc 2026-01-28 09:54:08 UTC
This issue has been addressed in the following products:

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9

Via RHSA-2026:1473 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:1473