Topic: Apache build with OpenSSL > 3.0.8

[winstonolson]

Is there a plan to release a new build of Apache with OpenSSL > 3.0.8. The 3.0.8 version is currently being flagged as insecure by institutional cybersecurity and the OpenSSL changelog at https://www.openssl.org/news/cl30.txt indicates some vulnerabilities in 3.0.8 that may need to be mititgated, such as:

* Fixed an issue where invalid certificate policies in leaf certificates are silently ignored by OpenSSL and other certificate policy checks are skipped for that certificate. A malicious CA could use this to deliberately assert invalid certificate policies in order to circumvent policy checking on the certificate altogether. ([CVE-2023-0465])
*Matt Caswell*

* Limited the number of nodes created in a policy tree to mitigate against CVE-2023-0464. The default limit is set to 1000 nodes, which should be sufficient for most installations. If required, the limit can be adjusted by setting the OPENSSL_POLICY_TREE_NODES_MAX build time define to a desired maximum number of nodes or zero to allow unlimited growth. ([CVE-2023-0464])
*Paul Dale*

Thanks!

[admin]

There is no 3.0.9 yet. When it is released we build httpd with it.

[admin]

See also note below: Due to the low severity of this issue we are not creating a new release at this time.


OpenSSL Security Advisory [28th March 2023]
===========================================

Invalid certificate policies in leaf certificates are silently ignored (CVE-2023-0465)
======================================================================================

Severity: Low

Applications that use a non-default option when verifying certificates may be vulnerable to an attack from a malicious CA to circumvent certain checks.

Invalid certificate policies in leaf certificates are silently ignored by OpenSSL and other certificate policy checks are skipped for that certificate. A malicious CA could use this to deliberately assert invalid certificate policies in order to circumvent policy checking on the certificate altogether.

Policy processing is disabled by default but can be enabled by passing the `-policy' argument to the command line utilities or by calling the `X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_policies()' function.

Due to the low severity of this issue we are not issuing new releases of OpenSSL at this time. The fix will be included in the next releases when they become available. The fix is also available in commit facfb1ab (for 3.1), commit 1dd43e07 (for 3.0), commit b013765a (for 1.1.1) in the OpenSSL git repository, and commit 10325176 (for 1.0.2) in the OpenSSL git repository for premium customers.

This issue was reported on 12th January 2023 by David Benjamin (Google). The fix was developed by Matt Caswell.

Certificate policy check not enabled (CVE-2023-0466)
====================================================

Severity: Low

The function X509_VERIFY_PARAM_add0_policy() is documented to implicitly enable the certificate policy check when doing certificate verification. However the implementation of the function does not enable the check which allows certificates with invalid or incorrect policies to pass the certificate verification.

As suddenly enabling the policy check could break existing deployments it was decided to keep the existing behavior of the X509_VERIFY_PARAM_add0_policy() function.

Instead the applications that require OpenSSL to perform certificate policy check need to use X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_policies() or explicitly enable the policy check by calling X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set_flags() with the X509_V_FLAG_POLICY_CHECK flag argument.

Certificate policy checks are disabled by default in OpenSSL and are not commonly used by applications.

OpenSSL 3.1, 3.0, 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 are vulnerable to this issue.

Applications need to be updated if they are affected by the issue.

Due to the low severity of this issue we are not creating a new release at this time. The documentation fix is also available in commit fc814a30 (for 3.1), commit 51e8a84c (for 3.0), commit 0d16b7e9 (for 1.1.1) in the OpenSSL git repository, and commit 73398dea (for 1.0.2) in the OpenSSL git repository for premium customers.

This issue was reported on 12th January 2023 by David Benjamin (Google). The documentation fix was developed by Tomas Mraz.

[winstonolson]

Got it. Thank you for the quick response. I appreciate your time!