CVE-2022-1473
Published: 03 May 2022
Summary
CVE-2022-1473 is a high-severity Incomplete Cleanup (CWE-459) vulnerability in Openssl Openssl. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, ranked in the top 45.0% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2022-3867
Vulnerability details
The OPENSSL_LH_flush() function, which empties a hash table, contains a bug that breaks reuse of the memory occuppied by the removed hash table entries. This function is used when decoding certificates or keys. If a long lived process periodically decodes…
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certificates or keys its memory usage will expand without bounds and the process might be terminated by the operating system causing a denial of service. Also traversing the empty hash table entries will take increasingly more time. Typically such long lived processes might be TLS clients or TLS servers configured to accept client certificate authentication. The function was added in the OpenSSL 3.0 version thus older releases are not affected by the issue. Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.3 (Affected 3.0.0,3.0.1,3.0.2).
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Mandates complete sanitization during cleanup so that shared resources (memory, caches, buffers) do not retain data across subjects.
Operational retention schedules mandate complete cleanup of temporary or residual sensitive data after use.
Termination of the non-persistent artifact guarantees cleanup of temporary state, directly countering incomplete cleanup weaknesses.
Fail-safe procedures can explicitly require cleanup of temporary state, resources, or privileges on failure to avoid leaving the system in an inconsistent state.
The explicit delete step when information is no longer needed implements the cleanup that this weakness omits.
Enforces complete cleanup and sanitization steps during disposal, closing gaps that leave data remnants on retired components.