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Posted on 10 December 2020
FreeBSD security notificat=============================================================================FreeBSD-SA-20:33.openssl Security Advisory
The FreeBSD Project
Topic: OpenSSL NULL pointer de-reference
Category: contrib
Module: openssl
Announced: 2020-12-08
Affects: All supported versions of FreeBSD.
Corrected: 2020-12-08 18:28:49 UTC (stable/12, 12.2-STABLE)
2020-12-08 19:10:40 UTC (releng/12.2, 12.2-RELEASE-p2)
2020-12-08 19:10:40 UTC (releng/12.1, 12.1-RELEASE-p12)
CVE Name: CVE-2020-1971
Note: The OpenSSL project has published publicly available patches for
versions included in FreeBSD 12.x. This vulnerability is also known to
affect OpenSSL versions included in FreeBSD 11.4. However, the OpenSSL
project is only giving patches for that version to premium support contract
holders. The FreeBSD project does not have access to these patches and
recommends FreeBSD 11.4 users to either upgrade to FreeBSD 12.x or leverage
up to date versions of OpenSSL in the ports/pkg system. The FreeBSD Project
may update this advisory to include FreeBSD 11.4 should patches become
publicly available.
For general information regarding FreeBSD Security Advisories,
including descriptions of the fields above, security branches, and the
following sections, please visit <URL:https://security.FreeBSD.org/>.
I. Background
FreeBSD includes software from the OpenSSL Project. The OpenSSL Project is a
collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, full-featured
Open Source toolkit for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. It is
also a general-purpose cryptography library.
II. Problem Description
The X.509 GeneralName type is a generic type for representing different types
of names. One of those name types is known as EDIPartyName. OpenSSL
provides a function GENERAL_NAME_cmp which compares different instances of a
GENERAL_NAME to see if they are equal or not. This function behaves
incorrectly when both GENERAL_NAMEs contain an EDIPARTYNAME.
III. Impact
An attacker who is able to control both items being compared can trigger a
NULL pointer dereference and a crash may occur leading to a possible denial
of service attack. As an example, if an attacker can trick a client of
server to check a maliciously constructed certificate against a malicious CRL
could trigger the NULL dereference.
IV. Workaround
No workaround is available.
V. Solution
Upgrade your vulnerable system to a supported FreeBSD stable or
release / security branch (releng) dated after the correction date.
Perform one of the following:
1) To update your vulnerable system via a binary patch:
Systems running a RELEASE version of FreeBSD on the i386 or amd64
platforms can be updated via the freebsd-update(8) utility:
# freebsd-update fetch
# freebsd-update install
2) To update your vulnerable system via a source code patch:
The following patches have been verified to apply to the applicable
FreeBSD release branches.
a) Download the relevant patch from the location below, and verify the
detached PGP signature using your PGP utility.
# fetch https://security.FreeBSD.org/patches/SA-20:33/openssl.patch
# fetch https://security.FreeBSD.org/patches/SA-20:33/openssl.patch.asc
# gpg --verify openssl.patch.asc
b) Apply the patch. Execute the following commands as root:
# cd /usr/src
# patch < /path/to/patch
c) Recompile the operating system using buildworld and installworld as
described in <URL:https://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/makeworld.html>.
Restart all daemons that use the library, or reboot the system.
VI. Correction details
The following list contains the correction revision numbers for each
affected branch.
Branch/path Revision
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
stable/12/ r368459
releng/12.2/ r368463
releng/12.1/ r368463
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
To see which files were modified by a particular revision, run the
following command, replacing NNNNNN with the revision number, on a
machine with Subversion installed:
# svn diff -cNNNNNN --summarize svn://svn.freebsd.org/base
Or visit the following URL, replacing NNNNNN with the revision number:
<URL:https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=NNNNNN>
VII. References
<URL:https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv/20201208.txt>
<URL:https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2020-1971>
The latest revision of this advisory is available at
<URL:https://security.FreeBSD.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-20:33.openssl.asc>
