All vulnerabilities

CVE-2024-0727

Null pointer dereference in PKCS12 parsing

Description

Issue summary: Processing a maliciously formatted PKCS12 file may lead OpenSSL to crash leading to a potential Denial of Service attack

Impact summary: Applications loading files in the PKCS12 format from untrusted sources might terminate abruptly.

A file in PKCS12 format can contain certificates and keys and may come from an untrusted source. The PKCS12 specification allows certain fields to be NULL, but OpenSSL does not correctly check for this case. This can lead to a NULL pointer dereference that results in OpenSSL crashing. If an application processes PKCS12 files from an untrusted source using the OpenSSL APIs then that application will be vulnerable to this issue.

OpenSSL APIs that are vulnerable to this are: PKCS12_parse(), PKCS12_unpack_p7data(), PKCS12_unpack_p7encdata(), PKCS12_unpack_authsafes() and PKCS12_newpass().

We have also fixed a similar issue in SMIME_write_PKCS7(). However since this function is related to writing data we do not consider it security significant.

The FIPS modules in 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue.

Patch Available

Fix available through Seal Security. 

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Fix without upgrading
Score
5.5
Severity
Medium
Ecosystem
Python
Publish Date
January 26, 2024
Modified Date
May 13, 2026
Score Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Affected Versions