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Issue summary: The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication...

High severity Unreviewed Published Sep 8, 2023 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Oct 14, 2024

Package

No package listedSuggest a package

Affected versions

Unknown

Patched versions

Unknown

Description

Issue summary: The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication code) implementation
contains a bug that might corrupt the internal state of applications on the
Windows 64 platform when running on newer X86_64 processors supporting the
AVX512-IFMA instructions.

Impact summary: If in an application that uses the OpenSSL library an attacker
can influence whether the POLY1305 MAC algorithm is used, the application
state might be corrupted with various application dependent consequences.

The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication code) implementation in OpenSSL does
not save the contents of non-volatile XMM registers on Windows 64 platform
when calculating the MAC of data larger than 64 bytes. Before returning to
the caller all the XMM registers are set to zero rather than restoring their
previous content. The vulnerable code is used only on newer x86_64 processors
supporting the AVX512-IFMA instructions.

The consequences of this kind of internal application state corruption can
be various - from no consequences, if the calling application does not
depend on the contents of non-volatile XMM registers at all, to the worst
consequences, where the attacker could get complete control of the application
process. However given the contents of the registers are just zeroized so
the attacker cannot put arbitrary values inside, the most likely consequence,
if any, would be an incorrect result of some application dependent
calculations or a crash leading to a denial of service.

The POLY1305 MAC algorithm is most frequently used as part of the
CHACHA20-POLY1305 AEAD (authenticated encryption with associated data)
algorithm. The most common usage of this AEAD cipher is with TLS protocol
versions 1.2 and 1.3 and a malicious client can influence whether this AEAD
cipher is used by the server. This implies that server applications using
OpenSSL can be potentially impacted. However we are currently not aware of
any concrete application that would be affected by this issue therefore we
consider this a Low severity security issue.

As a workaround the AVX512-IFMA instructions support can be disabled at
runtime by setting the environment variable OPENSSL_ia32cap:

OPENSSL_ia32cap=:~0x200000

The FIPS provider is not affected by this issue.

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Sep 8, 2023
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Sep 8, 2023
Last updated Oct 14, 2024

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS score

0.043%
(11th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2023-4807

GHSA ID

GHSA-53wr-cx66-4578

Source code

No known source code

Dependabot alerts are not supported on this advisory because it does not have a package from a supported ecosystem with an affected and fixed version.

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