CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-4575 — Issue summary: Use of -addreject option with the openssl x509 application adds a trusted use instead of a rejected use for a certificate

Medium CVSS 6.5

Issue summary: Use of -addreject option with the openssl x509 application adds a trusted use instead of a rejected use for a certificate. Impact summary: If a user intends to make a trusted certificate rejected for a particular use it will be instead marked as trusted for that use. A copy & paste error during minor refactoring of the code introduced this issue in the OpenSSL 3.5 version. If, for example, a trusted CA certificate should be trusted only for the purpose of authenticating TLS servers but not for CMS signature verification and the CMS signature verification is intended to be marked as rejected with the -addreject option, the resulting CA certificate will be trusted for CMS signature verification purpose instead. Only users which use the trusted certificate format who use the openssl x509 command line application to add rejected uses are affected by this issue. The issues affecting only the command line application are considered to be Low severity. The FIPS modules in 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue. OpenSSL 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, 3.0, 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 are also not affected by this issue.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
6.5 (3.1)
Published
2025-05-22
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-295

Affected products

  • openssl / openssl / 3.5.0

Matched remediation archetype

Cryptography, certificate, signature, and channel validation

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

Check exposure

  • Inventory affected algorithms, key uses, trust stores, certificate validation settings, random sources, and plaintext channels across clients and services.
  • Determine which secrets, identities, signatures, or data protections depend on the affected primitive or validation path.
  • Check debug, compatibility, fallback, and hostname or audience override settings in build and runtime configuration.

Remediate safely

  • Use a maintained platform cryptographic API with approved algorithms, modes, parameters, randomness, and full peer identity validation.
  • Remove insecure fallback and validation bypasses; separate keys by purpose and load them from managed secret storage.
  • Plan rotation or reissuance for affected keys, certificates, tokens, hashes, or ciphertext and document compatibility sequencing.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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