Bug 510433 - openssl compat mode x509 subject name injection
Summary: openssl compat mode x509 subject name injection
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Red Hat Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2009-07-09 09:12 UTC by Mark J. Cox
Modified: 2021-10-19 09:03 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2021-10-19 09:03:03 UTC
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Mark J. Cox 2009-07-09 09:12:36 UTC
In his upcoming Blackhat paper and presentation Dan Kaminsky
highlights some more issues he has found relating to SSL hash
collisions and related vulnerabilities.

His second issue is all about inconsistencies in the interpretation of subject
x509 names in certificates.  Specifically "issue 2d' is how the OpenSSL command line utility will output unescaped subject X509 lines to the standard output.  

So if some utility runs the openssl application from the command line and parses the text output, and if an attacker can craft a malicious certificate 
in such a way they fool a CA into signing it, they could present it to the utility and possibly fool that utility into thinking fields were different to they actually are, perhaps allowing the certificate to be accepted as legitimate.

So this attack assumes that some utility will parse the output of OpenSSL command line using the default 'compat' mode.  Applications should never do this anyway.

So upstream OpenSSL are unlikely to address this issue directly, although in the future the default output mode could be changed to something other than 'compat'.  The likely response will be documentation reminding people that parsing the output of running such an openssl command is not the right way to use OpenSSL.

Comment 1 Mark J. Cox 2009-07-09 09:25:21 UTC
Section 2d also mentions a non-exploitable read AV.  This was fixed as CVE-2009-0590 in upstream OpenSSL 0.9.8k

Comment 2 Mark J. Cox 2009-07-30 15:43:24 UTC
removing embargo, Dan gave presentation at Blackhat yesterday.


Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.