CVE-2022-3786: X.509 Email Address Variable Length Buffer Overflow

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 92.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2022-11-01 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-120

Description

A buffer overrun can be triggered in X.509 certificate verification, specifically in name constraint checking. Note that this occurs after certificate chain signature verification and requires either a CA to have signed a malicious certificate or for an application to continue certificate verification despite failure to construct a path to a trusted issuer. An attacker can craft a malicious email address in a certificate to overflow an arbitrary number of bytes containing the `.' character (decimal 46) on the stack. This buffer overflow could result in a crash (causing a denial of service). In a TLS client, this can be triggered by connecting to a malicious server. In a TLS server, this can be triggered if the server requests client authentication and a malicious client connects.

Affected products

Fedoraproject Fedora: 36, 37
Node.js: from 18.0.0 before 18.11.0; 18.12.0, 19.0.0 — fixed in 18.11.0
OpenSSL: from 3.0.0 before 3.0.7 — fixed in 3.0.7

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Node.js 18.11.0; OpenSSL 3.0.7. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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