Issue summary: Checking excessively long invalid RSA public keys may take
a long time.

Impact summary: Applications that use the function EVP_PKEY_public_check()
to check RSA public keys may experience long delays. Where the key that
is being checked has been obtained from an untrusted source this may lead
to a Denial of Service.

When function EVP_PKEY_public_check() is called on RSA public keys,
a computation is done to confirm that the RSA modulus, n, is composite.
For valid RSA keys, n is a product of two or more large primes and this
computation completes quickly. However, if n is an overly large prime,
then this computation would take a long time.

An application that calls EVP_PKEY_public_check() and supplies an RSA key
obtained from an untrusted source could be vulnerable to a Denial of Service
attack.

The function EVP_PKEY_public_check() is not called from other OpenSSL
functions however it is called from the OpenSSL pkey command line
application. For that reason that application is also vulnerable if used
with the '-pubin' and '-check' options on untrusted data.

The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected by this issue.

The OpenSSL 3.0 and 3.1 FIPS providers are affected by this issue.

Project Subscriptions

Vendors Products
Enterprise Linux Subscribe
Advisories
Source ID Title
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-6622-1 OpenSSL vulnerabilities
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-7894-1 EDK II vulnerabilities
Fixes

Solution

No solution given by the vendor.


Workaround

No workaround given by the vendor.

History

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 13:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics epss

{'score': 0.00524}

epss

{'score': 0.00539}


Fri, 22 Nov 2024 12:00:00 +0000


Mon, 14 Oct 2024 15:45:00 +0000


Mon, 14 Oct 2024 15:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


Mon, 14 Oct 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Weaknesses CWE-606

Projects

Sign in to view the affected projects.

cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: openssl

Published:

Updated: 2024-11-01T14:28:51.338Z

Reserved: 2023-11-21T10:16:34.346Z

Link: CVE-2023-6237

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2024-08-02T08:21:18.096Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Awaiting Analysis

Published: 2024-04-25T07:15:45.270

Modified: 2024-11-21T08:43:25.997

Link: CVE-2023-6237

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Low

Publid Date: 2024-01-15T00:00:00Z

Links: CVE-2023-6237 - Bugzilla

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses