Vulnerability in OpenSSL

CVE-2022-4304

A timing based side channel exists in the OpenSSL RSA Decryption implementation which could be sufficient to recover a plaintext across a network in a Bleichenbacher style attack. To achieve a successful decryption an attacker would have to be able to send a very large number of trial messages for decryption. The vulnerability affects all RSA padding modes: PKCS#1 v1.5, RSA-OEAP and RSASVE. For example, in a TLS connection, RSA is commonly used by a client to send an encrypted pre-master secret to the server. An attacker that had observed a genuine connection between a client and a server could use this flaw to send trial messages to the server and record the time taken to process them. After a sufficiently large number of messages the attacker could recover the pre-master secret used for the original connection and thus be able to decrypt the application data sent over that connection.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.9 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.162 (96.8th percentile), scored .

Moderate probability of exploitation in the next 30 days — watch for active exploitation reports. 97th percentile — 96.8% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2022-4304: held from 0.162 to 0.162.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.162 · newest: 0.162 · change: 0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2022-4304?
CVE-2022-4304 is a medium-severity vulnerability in OpenSSL, classified under Observable Discrepancy. CVSS score: 5.9/10. Published 2023-02-08.
How severe is CVE-2022-4304?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.9 out of 10.
Is CVE-2022-4304 known to be exploited?
18 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.