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Fencer Intel
medium 5.9

CVE-2022-38153 json

An issue was discovered in wolfSSL before 5.5.0 (when --enable-session-ticket is used); however, only version 5.3.0 is exploitable.

published 4y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2022-40750

cvss
5.9
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.5%
EPSS 2.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 84%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue was discovered in wolfSSL before 5.5.0 (when --enable-session-ticket is used); however, only version 5.3.0 is exploitable. Man-in-the-middle attackers or a malicious server can crash TLS 1.2 clients during a handshake. If an attacker injects a large ticket (more than 256 bytes) into a NewSessionTicket message in a TLS 1.2 handshake, and the client has a non-empty session cache, the session cache frees a pointer that points to unallocated memory, causing the client to crash with a "free(): invalid pointer" message. NOTE: It is likely that this is also exploitable during TLS 1.3 handshakes between a client and a malicious server. With TLS 1.3, it is not possible to exploit this as a man-in-the-middle.

Patch / fix

  • wolfssl Debian 13, Debian 12 5.5.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2022-38153

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Exploit prediction

2.48% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 84% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl/pull/5476 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • seclists.org http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2023/Jan/8 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • packetstormsecurity.com http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/170605/wolfSSL-5.3.0-Denial-Of-Service.html referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.