Vulnerability Note VU#104280

Multiple vulnerabilities in SSL/TLS implementations

Original Release date: 30 Sep 2003 | Last revised: 25 Aug 2004

Overview

Multiple vulnerabilities exist in different vendors' SSL/TLS implementations. The impacts of these vulnerabilities include remote execution of arbitrary code, denial of service, and disclosure of sensitive information.

Description

The U.K. National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) has reported multiple vulnerabilities in different vendors' implementations of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols. SSL and TLS are commonly used to provide authentication, encryption, integrity, and non-repudiation services to network applications such as HTTP, IMAP, POP3, LDAP, and others. Clients and servers exchange authentication information in X.509 certificates. While the SSL and TLS protocols do not use ASN.1/BER to communicate at the application layer, they do require an ASN.1 parser to encode and decode X.509 certificates and other cryptographic elements (e.g., PKCS#1 encoded RSA values and PKCS#7 encoded S/MIME parts) at the presentation layer.

A test suite developed by NISCC has exposed vulnerabilities in a variety of SSL/TLS implementations. While most of these vulnerabilities exist in ASN.1 parsing routines, some vulnerabilities may occur elsewhere. Note that cryptographic libraries that implement SSL/TLS frequently provide more general-purpose cryptographic utility. In such libraries, it is common for ASN.1 parsing code to be shared between SSL/TLS and other cryptographic functions.

Due to the general lack of specific vulnerability information, this document covers multiple vulnerabilities in different SSL/TLS implementations. Information about individual vendors is available in the Systems Affected section. Note that VU#104280 broadly covers ASN.1 related vulnerabilities in SSL/TLS implementations other than OpenSSL. VU#255484, VU#732952, VU#380864, VU#686224, and VU#935264 are specific to OpenSSL.

Further information is available in NISCC advisory 006489/TLS.

This set of vulnerabilities is different from those described in VU#748355/CA-2002-23.

Impact

The impacts associated with these vulnerabilities include execution of arbitrary code, denial of service, and disclosure of sensitive information.

Solution

Patch or Upgrade
Apply a patch or upgrade as appropriate. Information about specific vendors is available in the Systems Affected section of this document.

Systems Affected

VendorStatusDate NotifiedDate Updated
3ComUnknown30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
AlcatelUnknown30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
ApacheUnknown30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
Apache-SSLUnknown30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
AppGate Network Security ABVulnerable30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
Apple Computer Inc.Vulnerable30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
AT&TUnknown30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
AvayaUnknown30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
BitviseUnknown30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
BorderwareUnknown30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
Check PointVulnerable30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
Cisco Systems Inc.Vulnerable30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
ClavisterNot Vulnerable30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
Computer AssociatesUnknown30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
ConectivaVulnerable30 Sep 200325 Aug 2004
View More »

CVSS Metrics (Learn More)

Group Score Vector
Base N/A N/A
Temporal N/A N/A
Environmental N/A N/A

References

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered and researched by NISCC.

This document was written by Art Manion.

Other Information

  • CVE IDs: Unknown
  • CERT Advisory: CA-2003-26
  • Date Public: 30 Sep 2003
  • Date First Published: 30 Sep 2003
  • Date Last Updated: 25 Aug 2004
  • Severity Metric: 11.81
  • Document Revision: 26

Feedback

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This product is provided subject to the Notification as indicated here: http://www.us-cert.gov/legal.html#notify

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