CVE-2021-4044

HIGH

OpenSSL 3.0.0 - Infinite Loop via Certificate Verification Error Handling

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Exploitation Summary

EIP tracks 1 public exploit for CVE-2021-4044. PoCs published by phirojshah.

AI-analyzed exploit summary This repository contains a Python script that checks the OpenSSL version and tests SSL/TLS connections to a user-provided website to identify potential vulnerabilities related to CVE-2021-4044. It does not exploit the vulnerability but scans for its presence.

Description

Internally libssl in OpenSSL calls X509_verify_cert() on the client side to verify a certificate supplied by a server. That function may return a negative return value to indicate an internal error (for example out of memory). Such a negative return value is mishandled by OpenSSL and will cause an IO function (such as SSL_connect() or SSL_do_handshake()) to not indicate success and a subsequent call to SSL_get_error() to return the value SSL_ERROR_WANT_RETRY_VERIFY. This return value is only supposed to be returned by OpenSSL if the application has previously called SSL_CTX_set_cert_verify_callback(). Since most applications do not do this the SSL_ERROR_WANT_RETRY_VERIFY return value from SSL_get_error() will be totally unexpected and applications may not behave correctly as a result. The exact behaviour will depend on the application but it could result in crashes, infinite loops or other similar incorrect responses. This issue is made more serious in combination with a separate bug in OpenSSL 3.0 that will cause X509_verify_cert() to indicate an internal error when processing a certificate chain. This will occur where a certificate does not include the Subject Alternative Name extension but where a Certificate Authority has enforced name constraints. This issue can occur even with valid chains. By combining the two issues an attacker could induce incorrect, application dependent behaviour. Fixed in OpenSSL 3.0.1 (Affected 3.0.0).

Exploits (1)

nomisec SCANNER
by phirojshah · poc
https://github.com/phirojshah/CVE-2021-4044

This repository contains a Python script that checks the OpenSSL version and tests SSL/TLS connections to a user-provided website to identify potential vulnerabilities related to CVE-2021-4044. It does not exploit the vulnerability but scans for its presence.

Classification
Scanner 90%
Attack Type
Info Leak
Complexity
Trivial
Reliability
Reliable
Target: OpenSSL 3.0.0
No auth needed
Prerequisites: Python 3.x · OpenSSL installed on the system
devstral-2 · analyzed Feb 16, 2026 Full analysis →

References (3)

Core 3

Scores

CVSS v3 7.5
EPSS 0.3328
EPSS Percentile 97.0%
Attack Vector NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Details

CWE
CWE-835
Status published
Products (19)
crates.io/openssl-src 300.0.0 - 300.0.4crates.io
netapp/500f_firmware
netapp/a250_firmware
netapp/cloud_backup
netapp/e-series_performance_analyzer
netapp/h300e_firmware
netapp/h300s_firmware
netapp/h410c_firmware
netapp/h410s_firmware
netapp/h500e_firmware
... and 9 more
Published Dec 14, 2021
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026