Security Bulletin: Multiple vulnerabilities in OpenSSL affect AIX

Summary

Vulnerabilities in OpenSSL could allow a remote attacker to cause a buffer overflow (CVE-2022-3602), cause a denial of service (CVE-2022-3786), or obtain sensitive information (CVE-2022-3358). OpenSSL is used by AIX as part of AIX’s secure network communications.

Vulnerability Details

CVEID:CVE-2022-3602
**DESCRIPTION:**OpenSSL is vulnerable to a stack-based buffer overflow, caused by improper bounds checking during X.509 certificate verification. By using a specially-crafted email address, a remote attacker could overflow a buffer and execute arbitrary code or cause the application to crash.
CVSS Base score: 7.5
CVSS Temporal Score: See: https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/239161 for the current score.
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)

CVEID:CVE-2022-3786
**DESCRIPTION:**OpenSSL is vulnerable to a denial of service, caused by a stack based buffer overflow during X.509 certificate verification. By using a specially-crafted email address in a certificate, a remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to cause a TLS client to crash, and results in a denial of service condition.
CVSS Base score: 7.5
CVSS Temporal Score: See: https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/239165 for the current score.
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)

CVEID:CVE-2022-3358
**DESCRIPTION:**OpenSSL could allow a remote attacker to obtain sensitive information, caused by the improper handling of legacy custom ciphers passed to the EVP_EncryptInit_ex2(), EVP_DecryptInit_ex2() and EVP_CipherInit_ex2() functions. By creating a custom cipher with NID_undef using the legacy EVP_CIPHER_meth_new()function, a remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability force the use of a NULL cipher and emit the plaintext as the ciphertext.
CVSS Base score: 5.3
CVSS Temporal Score: See: https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/238264 for the current score.
CVSS Vector: (CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N)

Affected Products and Versions

The following fileset levels are vulnerable:

Note:

A. 0.9.8, 1.0.1 OpenSSL versions are out-of-support. Support for OpenSSL 1.0.2 version ends by December 2023. Customers are advised to upgrade to OpenSSL 1.1.1 or 3.0 version.

B. Latest level of OpenSSL fileset is available from the web download site:

https://www-01.ibm.com/marketing/iwm/iwm/web/pickUrxNew.do?source=aixbp&S_PKG=openssl

To find out whether the affected filesets are installed on your systems, refer to the lslpp command found in the AIX user’s guide.

Example: lslpp -L | grep -i openssl.base

Remediation/Fixes

FIXES

IBM strongly recommends addressing the vulnerability now.

A fix is available, and it can be downloaded from:

https://www-01.ibm.com/marketing/iwm/iwm/web/pickUrxNew.do?source=aixbp&S_PKG=openssl

To extract the fixes from the tar file:

zcat openssl-3.0.7.1000.tar.Z | tar xvf -

IMPORTANT: If possible, it is recommended that a mksysb backup of the system be created. Verify it is both bootable and readable before proceeding.

Note that all the previously reported security vulnerability fixes are also included in above mentioned fileset level. Please refer to the readme file (provided along with the fileset) for the complete list of vulnerabilities fixed.

To preview the fix installation:

installp -apYd . openssl

To install the fix package:

installp -aXYd . openssl

openssl dgst -sha256 -verify [pubkey_file] -signature [advisory_file].sig [advisory_file]

openssl dgst -sha256 -verify [pubkey_file] -signature [ifix_file].sig [ifix_file]

Published advisory OpenSSL signature file location:

<https://aix.software.ibm.com/aix/efixes/security/openssl_advisory37.asc.sig&gt;

Workarounds and Mitigations

None