CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2022-0778 — The BN_mod_sqrt() function, which computes a modular square root, contains a bug that can cause it to loop forever for non-prime moduli

High CVSS 7.5

The BN_mod_sqrt() function, which computes a modular square root, contains a bug that can cause it to loop forever for non-prime moduli. Internally this function is used when parsing certificates that contain elliptic curve public keys in compressed form or explicit elliptic curve parameters with a base point encoded in compressed form. It is possible to trigger the infinite loop by crafting a certificate that has invalid explicit curve parameters. Since certificate parsing happens prior to verification of the certificate signature, any process that parses an externally supplied certificate may thus be subject to a denial of service attack. The infinite loop can also be reached when parsing crafted private keys as they can contain explicit elliptic curve parameters. Thus vulnerable situations include: - TLS clients consuming server certificates - TLS servers consuming client certificates - Hosting providers taking certificates or private keys from customers - Certificate authorities parsing certification requests from subscribers - Anything else which parses ASN.1 elliptic curve parameters Also any other applications that use the BN_mod_sqrt() where the attacker can control the pa…

Severity
High
CVSS
7.5 (3.1)
Published
2022-03-15
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-835

Affected products

  • openssl / openssl
  • debian / debian_linux / 9.0
  • debian / debian_linux / 10.0
  • debian / debian_linux / 11.0
  • netapp / cloud_volumes_ontap_mediator
  • netapp / clustered_data_ontap

Showing 6 representative product identities from 30 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Resource exhaustion and denial of service

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Identify attacker-influenced work factors including input size, nesting, compression, fan-out, regex cost, allocation, recursion, retries, and connection lifetime.
  • Map per-request and shared CPU, memory, disk, descriptor, thread, queue, and downstream-service limits.
  • Determine whether authentication, tenancy, quotas, and rate controls apply before expensive processing begins.

Remediate safely

  • Bound input size, nesting, expansion, work, concurrency, queue depth, retries, and execution time before resource-intensive processing.
  • Release resources on every success, error, cancellation, and timeout path and use backpressure instead of unbounded buffering.
  • Update affected components and add small deterministic tests that assert resource ceilings rather than exhausting a host.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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