Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:HSummary
CVE-2023-6129 is a medium-severity Expected Behavior Violation (CWE-440) vulnerability in Openssl Openssl. Its CVSS base score is 6.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked in the top 18% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SI-6 (Security and Privacy Function Verification) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-58384
Vulnerability Data
Issue summary: The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication code) implementation contains a bug that might corrupt the internal state of applications running on PowerPC CPU based platforms if the CPU provides vector instructions. Impact summary: If an attacker can influence whether…
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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 for PowerPC CPUs restores the contents of vector registers in a different order than they are saved. Thus the contents of some of these vector registers are corrupted when returning to the caller. The vulnerable code is used only on newer PowerPC processors supporting the PowerISA 2.07 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 unless the compiler uses the vector registers for storing pointers, 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. If this cipher is enabled on the server a malicious client can influence whether this AEAD cipher is used. This implies that TLS 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.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation directly checks whether implemented functions match their specifications.
Security function verification confirms that functions operate according to their defined expected behavior.
Requiring documented secure-development standards and tools can mandate bounds-checked coding practices that avoid the weakness.
Requiring a documented security architecture and design reduces the chance that implementation deviates from intended behavior.
Input validation can structurally reject or sanitize data that would otherwise trigger an out-of-bounds write.
Memory-protection mechanisms limit the exploitability and blast radius of a successful out-of-bounds write.
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.
Secure SDLC practices directly enforce specification compliance and catch expected-behavior violations during development.
Security testing and exercises help discover behavior deviations before deployment.
Vulnerability identification can surface spec-violating flaws, while eliminating the weakness reduces some vulnerability backlog.
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.
Security testing in development and acceptance validates that functions behave as specified.
Secure development life cycle mandates verification against specifications, directly reducing expected-behavior violations.
Application security requirements explicitly define expected behavior that must be met.
Secure architecture and engineering principles reduce the likelihood of buffer overflows.
Secure coding practices enforce adherence to functional specifications during implementation.
Change management can catch specification deviations introduced by modifications.