CVE-2023-6237

MEDIUM
MEDIUM Priority: 0.15 BB Relevance: 62/100
Published: 2024-04-25 Modified: 2026-11-10 First seen: 2026-11-06 Status: active

Attack Surface

Network No Auth No Interaction

CVSS Vector Breakdown

AV: Network
AC: High
PR: None
UI: None
S: Unchanged
C: None
I: None
A: High

Description

Issue summary: Checking excessively long invalid RSA public keys may take a long time. Impact summary: Applications that use the function EVP_PKEY_public_check() to check RSA public keys may experience long delays. Where the key that is being checked has been obtained from an untrusted source this may lead to a Denial of Service. When function EVP_PKEY_public_check() is called on RSA public keys, a computation is done to confirm that the RSA modulus, n, is composite. For valid RSA keys, n is a product of two or more large primes and this computation completes quickly. However, if n is an overly large prime, then this computation would take a long time. An application that calls EVP_PKEY_public_check() and supplies an RSA key obtained from an untrusted source could be vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack. The function EVP_PKEY_public_check() is not called from other OpenSSL functions however it is called from the OpenSSL pkey command line application. For that reason that application is also vulnerable if used with the '-pubin' and '-check' options on untrusted data. The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected by this issue. The OpenSSL 3.0 and 3.1 FIPS providers are affected by this issue.

Weakness Classification (1)

Bug Bounty Relevance

62 / 100
✓ Network accessible
✓ No authentication
✓ No user interaction

CVSS Score

5.9 / 10.0 v3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS — Exploitation Probability

2.63%
Raw Score 0.026260
Percentile 85.7%
Date 2026-11-12

EPSS Trend

2026-11-12
0.02626
2026-11-10
0.02303
2026-11-09
0.02303
2026-11-08
0.02303
2026-11-07
0.02303
2026-11-06
0.02303

Intelligence Sources

nvd ref →