Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2023-40661 is a medium-severity Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer (CWE-119) vulnerability in Redhat Enterprise Linux. Its CVSS base score is 5.4 (Medium).
Operationally, ranked in the top 30% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-45217
Vulnerability Data
Several memory vulnerabilities were identified within the OpenSC packages, particularly in the card enrollment process using pkcs15-init when a user or administrator enrolls cards. To take advantage of these flaws, an attacker must have physical access to the computer system…
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and employ a custom-crafted USB device or smart card to manipulate responses to APDUs. This manipulation can potentially allow compromise key generation, certificate loading, and other card management operations during enrollment.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
CVEs Like This One
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.
Ongoing control assessments and code testing (static/dynamic analysis, fuzzing) surface memory buffer restriction failures, which are then remediated before release.
Managed runtimes used by platform-independent applications (e.g., JVM, CLR) enforce memory safety, preventing most buffer overflows that require direct memory manipulation.
Memory protections (e.g., W^X, ASLR) make exploitation of buffer-boundary violations far harder to turn into code execution.
Detects exploitation attempts that produce memory corruption, crashes, or anomalous behavior.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
A.8.25 mandates secure SDLC practices (secure coding guidelines, security requirements, testing including code scans and penetration tests, developer training) that reach buffer management and can stop many buffer overruns from reaching production, but leaves a bounded remainder (e.g. flaws in non-software components, incomplete enforcement of guidelines, or post-deployment changes)
Application security requirements can specify memory-safety rules, but do not prescribe implementation details.
A.8.27 mandates security-by-design principles (e.g. least privilege, fail securely, distrust external input, hardening) plus design reviews that can catch and stop buffer-boundary errors before they reach code, but this is only one minority slice of CWE-119's broad surface (language-specific flaws, unsafe library use, compiler/runtime mitigations, and post-deployment instances remain outside its direct scope).
Secure coding standards explicitly forbid unsafe buffer operations, directly eliminating CWE-119.
Security testing in development catches out-of-bounds accesses before release, covering most instances of the weakness.
Hardening callouts derived
DISA STIG baselines are authored against specific weaknesses. Where this CVE cites a broad weakness class, the mapping is not asserted at that abstraction (owner ruling, 2026-09-25: grade only at Base and below), so no rule is shown here rather than a rule shown against the wrong grain.
- No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-119, a class-level weakness. Rules are authored against its narrower children: CWE-823.