CVE-2023-5363: OpenSSL’s Potential Information Disclosure Flaw

OpenSSL is a widely used cryptography library that provides a variety of functions for secure communication and data protection. On October 24, 2023, a new vulnerability was discovered in OpenSSL that could allow a remote attacker to obtain sensitive information.

The vulnerability, CVE-2023-5363, is caused by an incorrect cipher key and IV length processing during the initialization of some symmetric ciphers. This can lead to a buffer overflow, which the attacker can exploit to read sensitive information from memory.

“A truncation in the IV can result in non-uniqueness, which could result in loss of confidentiality for some cipher modes,” reads the OpenSSL security advisory.

The vulnerability affects OpenSSL versions 3.0.0 to 3.0.11 and 3.1.0 to 3.1.3. OpenSSL 3.0.12 and 3.1.4 are not affected.

The potential impact of this vulnerability is significant. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to obtain sensitive information such as passwords, encryption keys, and other confidential data. This information could then be used to launch further attacks against the affected system.

The best way to mitigate the CVE-2023-5363 vulnerability is to upgrade to the latest version of OpenSSL. OpenSSL 3.0 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.0.12, and OpenSSL 3.1 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.1.4.