Cyber Resilience

CVE-2023-4807

Openssl 1.1.1 – 1.1.1w

Published
08 September 2023
Modified
23 April 2025
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 7.8
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0086 55th percentile
Risk Priority 60 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2023-4807 is a high-severity Expected Behavior Violation (CWE-440) vulnerability in Openssl Openssl. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).

Operationally, ranked in the top 45% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

Issue summary: The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication code) implementation contains a bug that might corrupt the internal state of applications on the Windows 64 platform when running on newer X86_64 processors supporting the AVX512-IFMA instructions. Impact summary: If in an…

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application that uses the OpenSSL library an attacker can influence whether the POLY1305 MAC algorithm is used, the application state might be corrupted with various application dependent consequences. The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication code) implementation in OpenSSL does not save the contents of non-volatile XMM registers on Windows 64 platform when calculating the MAC of data larger than 64 bytes. Before returning to the caller all the XMM registers are set to zero rather than restoring their previous content. The vulnerable code is used only on newer x86_64 processors supporting the AVX512-IFMA instructions. The consequences of this kind of internal application state corruption can be various - from no consequences, if the calling application does not depend on the contents of non-volatile XMM registers at all, to the worst consequences, where the attacker could get complete control of the application process. However given the contents of the registers are just zeroized so the attacker cannot put arbitrary values inside, the most likely consequence, if any, would be an incorrect result of some application dependent calculations or a crash leading to a denial of service. The POLY1305 MAC algorithm is most frequently used as part of the CHACHA20-POLY1305 AEAD (authenticated encryption with associated data) algorithm. The most common usage of this AEAD cipher is with TLS protocol versions 1.2 and 1.3 and a malicious client can influence whether this AEAD cipher is used by the server. This implies that server applications using OpenSSL can be potentially impacted. However we are currently not aware of any concrete application that would be affected by this issue therefore we consider this a Low severity security issue. As a workaround the AVX512-IFMA instructions support can be disabled at runtime by setting the environment variable OPENSSL_ia32cap: OPENSSL_ia32cap=:~0x200000 The FIPS provider is not affected by this issue.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

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Affected Assets

openssl
openssl
1.1.1 — 1.1.1w · 3.0.0 — 3.0.11 · 3.1.0 — 3.1.3

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.

addresses: CWE-440

Verification of security function operation directly detects deviations from expected behavior.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.PS-06 full match
prevents

Secure SDLC practices directly enforce specification compliance and catch expected-behavior violations during development.

ID.IM-02 partial match
prevents

Security testing and exercises help discover behavior deviations before deployment.

ID.RA-01 partial match
prevents

Vulnerability identification can surface spec-violating flaws, while eliminating the weakness reduces some vulnerability backlog.

PR.PS-02 partial match
prevents

Routine software maintenance and patching can remediate discovered specification violations.

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.

finds

Security testing in development and acceptance validates that functions behave as specified.

prevents

Secure development life cycle mandates verification against specifications, directly reducing expected-behavior violations.

prevents

Application security requirements explicitly define expected behavior that must be met.

prevents

Secure coding practices enforce adherence to functional specifications during implementation.

finds

Change management can catch specification deviations introduced by modifications.

none

Documented operating procedures reduce the chance that functions deviate from intended behavior.

References