CVE-2023-0286 X.400 address type confusion in X.509 GeneralName

What is CVE-2023-0286?

CVE-2023-0286 is a high-severity memory corruption vulnerability in Openssl Openssl, published on 8 Feb 2023. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

There is a type confusion vulnerability relating to X.400 address processing inside an X.509 GeneralName. X.400 addresses were parsed as an ASN1_STRING but the public structure definition for GENERAL_NAME incorrectly specified the type of the x400Address field as ASN1_TYPE. This field is subsequently interpreted by the OpenSSL function GENERAL_NAME_cmp as an ASN1_TYPE rather than an ASN1_STRING.

When CRL checking is enabled (i.e. the application sets the X509_V_FLAG_CRL_CHECK flag), this vulnerability may allow an attacker to pass arbitrary pointers to a memcmp call, enabling them to read memory contents or enact a denial of service. In most cases, the attack requires the attacker to provide both the certificate chain and CRL, neither of which need to have a valid signature. If the attacker only controls one of these inputs, the other input must already contain an X.400 address as a CRL distribution point, which is uncommon. As such, this vulnerability is most likely to only affect applications which have implemented their own functionality for retrieving CRLs over a network.

Weakness: CWE-843

Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-0286?

8 open source packages ship an affected version, including openssl-src and cryptography. It affects 3 products.

Products include Openssl Openssl, Stormshield Stormshield Management Center, Stormshield Stormshield Network Security.

How do I fix CVE-2023-0286?

Upgrade openssl-src to a fixed version for your release line: 111.25.0 or 300.0.12.

Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.

Is CVE-2023-0286 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-0286 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Openssl Openssl

• CVE-2009-3245 Null dereference in n/a Critical 10.0
• CVE-2006-3738 Memory corruption in n/a Critical 10.0
• CVE-2026-63073 Untrusted Sender DN Used as Format String in CMP Response Validation Critical 9.8
• CVE-2016-6309 Use after free in n/a Critical 9.8
• CVE-2016-0799 Integer overflow in n/a Critical 9.8

All Openssl Openssl vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as ALPINE-CVE-2023-0286, ALSA-2025:7895, ALSA-2025:7937, AZL-13564, AZL-13701, AZL-37614 and 34 more.