Issue summary: The OpenSSL Certificate Management Protocol (CMP) caches additional certificates (extraCerts) sent in a CMP message, but never expunges them (for instance if they are invalid). If a server reuses an OSSL_CMP_CTX frequently, this cache of extraCerts may grow unboundedly, and a malicious client may flood a CMP server with requests driving this growth.
Impact summary: Users utilizing a CMP server that reuses a single OSSL_CMP_CTX for the lifetime of a server process may observe unbounded memory growth in the event a malicious client repeatedly sends requests containing unique extra certificates, which may lead to OOM conditions.
CWE: CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
Description: If a remote user sends CMP messages to a server with a list of extraCerts and the message is rejected, the extraCerts from the message remains in the server contexts untrusted certificate stack. This exposes servers with long lived ctx objects to Denial of Service attacks in which an attacker sends messages intending to be rejected with a large list of additional certificates repeatedly, forcing the server to store them indefinitely.
The issue was fixed by removing the added extra certs if the message is rejected, using the same method as when the context is configured to not do caching at all.
FIPS impact: no As the CMP code lives outside the FIPS module boundary, no FIPS modules are affected by this CVE.
| Software | Affected versions |
|---|---|
| openssl / openssl | >= 3.0.0, < 3.0.22 |
| openssl / openssl | >= 3.4.0, < 3.4.7 |
| openssl / openssl | >= 3.5.0, < 3.5.8 |
| openssl / openssl | >= 3.6.0, < 3.6.4 |
| openssl / openssl | >= 4.0.0, < 4.0.2 |
A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.
CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.
A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.
Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.
Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.
SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.