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OpenSSL Fixes High-Severity DTLS Flaw That Can Leak Heap Memory Unencrypted

OpenSSL Fixes High-Severity DTLS Flaw That Can Leak Heap Memory Unencrypted

Sep 30, 2026 Vulnerability / Network Security
A High-severity OpenSSL flaw can leak heap memory to the other side of a DTLS connection or crash the program,  OpenSSL said  on September 29 as it released fixes. DTLS , the TLS variant used for UDP traffic, resends a handshake message if no reply arrives before the timer expires. The leak or crash can happen when such a resend starts while a larger handshake message is stuck part-way through being sent. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-84782, is fixed in  OpenSSL 4.0.3, 3.6.5, 3.5.9 and 3.4.8 . Fixed versions for the older 3.0, 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 branches go only to customers who pay for OpenSSL's premium support. OpenSSL 3.0  stopped getting public security fixes  on September 7. OpenSSL has not said whether an attacker can cause a resend while a message is stuck, nor has it reported any attacks exploiting the flaw. DTLS is used, for example, to protect WebRTC data channels and to set up encryption keys for internet calls. Software is exposed to this fla...
Critical OpenSSL Flaw Allows Hackers to Decrypt HTTPS Traffic

Critical OpenSSL Flaw Allows Hackers to Decrypt HTTPS Traffic

Jan 29, 2016
The OpenSSL Foundation has released the promised patch for a high severity vulnerability in its cryptographic code library that let attackers obtain the key to decrypt HTTPS-based communications and other Transport layer security (TLS) channels. OpenSSL is an open-source library that is the most widely used in applications for secure data transfers. Most websites use it to enable Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. However, after serious security vulnerabilities were discovered in OpenSSL over the last few years, the crypto library has been under much investigation by security researchers. The latest bugs affect OpenSSL versions 1.0.1 and 1.0.2, which has been patched in new releases of OpenSSL, versions 1.0.1r and 1.0.2f . The team has patched two separate vulnerabilities in OpenSSL. The " high severity " bug, identified as CVE-2016-0701 , addresses issues in the implementations of the Diffie-Hellman key exchang...
OpenSSL Vulnerable to Man-in-the-Middle Attack and Several Other Bugs

OpenSSL Vulnerable to Man-in-the-Middle Attack and Several Other Bugs

Jun 05, 2014
Remember OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability ? Several weeks ago, the exposure of this security bug chilled the Internet, revealed that millions of websites were vulnerable to a flaw in the OpenSSL code which they used to encrypt their communications. Now once again the OpenSSL Foundation has issued software updates to patch six new vulnerabilities, and two of them are critical. MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE ATTACK (CVE-2014-0224) First critical vulnerability (CVE-2014-0224) in OpenSSL is " CCS Injection " - resides in ChangeCipherSpec (CCS) request sent during the handshake that could allow an attacker to perform a man-in-the-middle attack against the encrypted connection servers and clients.  By exploiting this vulnerability an attacker could intercept an encrypted connection which allows him to decrypt, read or manipulate the data. But the reported flaw is exploitable only if both server and client are vulnerable to this issue. According to the OpenSSL advisory , " An attacker...
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Reco Finds Four in Five Agents Run With Zero IT Oversight

websiteReco AISaaS Security / AI Security
See which agent permissions security teams aren't reviewing, and why it matters now.
cyber security

Build Your Email Security Strategy for the Agentic Era

websiteAdaptive SecurityEmail Security / Cybersecurity
Get the 2026 checklist for defending against AI phishing, compromised accounts, and human error.
OpenSSL HollowByte Flaw Could Freeze Server Memory with 11-Byte TLS Requests

OpenSSL HollowByte Flaw Could Freeze Server Memory with 11-Byte TLS Requests

Jul 17, 2026 Vulnerability / Server Security
Eleven bytes will make an unpatched OpenSSL server set aside up to 131 KB of memory for a message that never arrives. On the glibc systems Okta tested, that memory is gone until the process restarts. OpenSSL shipped the HollowByte fix in June with no CVE, no advisory, and no changelog entry pointing at it. Okta's Red Team, which reported the denial-of-service bug and named it, published the details on Thursday. The fixed releases are OpenSSL 4.0.1, 3.6.3, 3.5.7, 3.4.6, and 3.0.21 , all dated June 9. Every release on those branches before the fixed ones has it. Nothing in a normal patch pipeline will point you at them: there is no identifier for a scanner to match and no advisory to read. The flaw is that OpenSSL took the attacker's word for it. Every TLS handshake message carries a 4-byte header, three bytes of which declare how long the body will be. Older versions grew the receive buffer to that declared size the moment the header landed, before a single byte of the body ...
OpenSSL Releases Patch for 2 New High-Severity Vulnerabilities

OpenSSL Releases Patch for 2 New High-Severity Vulnerabilities

Nov 01, 2022
The OpenSSL project has rolled out fixes to contain two high-severity flaws in its widely used cryptography library that could result in a denial-of-service (DoS) and remote code execution. The issues, tracked as  CVE-2022-3602 and CVE-2022-3786 , have been described as buffer overrun vulnerabilities that can be triggered during X.509 certificate verification by supplying a specially-crafted email address. "In a TLS client, this can be triggered by connecting to a malicious server," OpenSSL said in an advisory for CVE-2022-3786. "In a TLS server, this can be triggered if the server requests client authentication and a malicious client connects." OpenSSL is an  open source implementation  of the SSL and TLS protocols used for secure communication and is baked into several operating systems and a wide range of software . Versions 3.0.0 through 3.0.6 of the library are affected by the new flaws, which has been remediated in version 3.0.7. It's worth noting tha...
Heartbleed - OpenSSL Zero-day Bug leaves Millions of websites Vulnerable

Heartbleed - OpenSSL Zero-day Bug leaves Millions of websites Vulnerable

Apr 08, 2014
It is advised to those who are running their web server with OpenSSL 1.0.1 through 1.0, then it is significantly important that you update to OpenSSL 1.0.1g immediately or as soon as possible.  As this afternoon, an extremely critical programming flaw in the OpenSSL has been discovered that apparently exposed the cryptographic keys and private data from some of the most important sites and services on the Internet. The bug was independently discovered by security firm Codenomicon along with a Google Security engineer. The flaw is in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library and its weakness allows cyber criminals to steal the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Security Layer) encryption used to secure the Internet. OpenSSL is an open-source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. The core library implements the basic cryptographic functions that enable SSL and TLS encryption. Mostly eve...
Google Unveils BoringSSL, Another Flavor of OpenSSL

Google Unveils BoringSSL, Another Flavor of OpenSSL

Jun 21, 2014
The open source encryption protocol, OpenSSL, which is used by several social networks, search engines, banks and other websites to enable secure connections while transmitting data, came to everybody's attention following the Heartbleed vulnerability , a critical bug in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS/DTLS heartbeat extension that allows attackers to read portions of the affected server’s memory, potentially revealing users data, that the server did not intend to reveal. Now, the biggest Internet giant Google is launching a new fork of OpenSSL, which they dubbed as BoringSSL, developed by its own independent work with the code. " We have used a number of patches on top of OpenSSL for many years, " Adam Langley, a cryptography engineer and Google employee, wrote in a blog post introducing BoringSSL. " Some of them have been accepted into the main OpenSSL repository, but many of them don't mesh with OpenSSL's guarantee of API and ABI ...
OpenSSL Releases Patch For "High" Severity Vulnerability

OpenSSL Releases Patch For "High" Severity Vulnerability

Nov 10, 2016
As announced on Tuesday, the OpenSSL project team released OpenSSL version 1.1.0c that addresses three security vulnerabilities in its software. The most serious of all is a heap-based buffer overflow bug (CVE-2016-7054) related to Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections using *-CHACHA20-POLY1305 cipher suites. The vulnerability, reported by Robert Święcki of the Google Security Team on September 25, can lead to DoS attack by corrupting larger payloads, resulting in a crash of OpenSSL. The severity of the flaw is rated "High" and does not affect OpenSSL versions prior to 1.1.0. However, the OpenSSL team reports there is no evidence that the flaw is exploitable beyond a DoS attack. The OpenSSL project also patches a moderate severity flaw (CVE-2016-7053) that can cause applications to crash. "Applications parsing invalid CMS structures can crash with a NULL pointer dereference. This is caused by a bug in the handling of the ASN.1 CHOICE type in OpenSSL 1.1.0 ...
DROWN Attack — More than 11 Million OpenSSL HTTPS Websites at Risk

DROWN Attack — More than 11 Million OpenSSL HTTPS Websites at Risk

Mar 01, 2016
A new deadly security vulnerability has been discovered in OpenSSL that affects more than 11 Million modern websites and e-mail services protected by an ancient, long deprecated transport layer security protocol, Secure Sockets Layer (SSLv2). Dubbed DROWN , the highly critical security hole in OpenSSL was disclosed today as a low-cost attack that could decrypt your sensitive, secure HTTPS communications, including passwords and credit card details… ...and that too in a matter of hours or in some cases almost immediately, a team of 15 security researchers from various universities and the infosec community warned Tuesday. Here’s what the security researchers said: "We've been able to execute the attack against OpenSSL versions that are vulnerable to CVE-2016-0703 in under a minute using a single PC. Even for servers that do not have these particular bugs, the general variant of the attack, which works against any SSLv2 server, can be conducted in under 8 hour...
Critical DoS Flaw found in OpenSSL — How It Works

Critical DoS Flaw found in OpenSSL — How It Works

Sep 23, 2016
The OpenSSL Foundation has patched over a dozen vulnerabilities in its cryptographic code library, including a high severity bug that can be exploited for denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. OpenSSL is a widely used open-source cryptographic library that provides encrypted Internet connections using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) for the majority of websites, as well as other secure services. The vulnerabilities exist in OpenSSL versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and 1.1.0 and patched in OpenSSL versions 1.1.0a, 1.0.2i and 1.0.1u. The Critical-rated bug ( CVE-2016-6304 ) can be exploited by sending a large OCSP Status Request extension on the targeted server during connection negotiations, which causes memory exhaustion to launch DoS attacks, the OpenSSL Project said . What is OCSP Protocol? OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol), supported by all modern web browsers, is a protocol designed to perform verification and obtain the revocation status of a digital ...
OpenSSL Releases Patches for 2 High-Severity Security Vulnerabilities

OpenSSL Releases Patches for 2 High-Severity Security Vulnerabilities

Mar 26, 2021
The maintainers of OpenSSL have released a fix for two high-severity security flaws in its software that could be exploited to carry out denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and bypass certificate verification. Tracked as CVE-2021-3449 and CVE-2021-3450 , both the  vulnerabilities  have been resolved in an update (version OpenSSL 1.1.1k) released on Thursday. While CVE-2021-3449 affects all OpenSSL 1.1.1 versions, CVE-2021-3450 impacts OpenSSL versions 1.1.1h and newer. OpenSSL is a software library consisting of cryptographic functions that implement the Transport Layer Security protocol with the goal of securing communications sent over a computer network. According to an advisory published by OpenSSL, CVE-2021-3449 concerns a potential DoS vulnerability arising due to NULL pointer dereferencing that can cause an OpenSSL TLS server to crash if in the course of renegotiation the client transmits a malicious "ClientHello" message during the  handshake  between the s...
How Heartbleed Bug Exposes Your Passwords to Hackers

How Heartbleed Bug Exposes Your Passwords to Hackers

Apr 10, 2014
Are you safe from the critical bug Heartbleed?? OpenSSL- the encryption technology used by millions of websites to encrypt the communication and is also used to protect our sensitive data such as e-mails, passwords or banking information.  But a tiny, but most critical flaw called " Heartbleed " in the widely used OpenSSL opened doors for the cyber criminals to extract sensitive data from the system memory. WHAT IS HEARTBLEED? SSL and TLS are known to provide communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as websites, email, instant messaging (IM), including some virtual private networks (VPNs). Heartbleed is a critical bug ( CVE-2014-0160 ) is in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library, that actually resides in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS (transport layer security protocols) and DTLS ( Datagram TLS ) heartbeat extension (RFC6520). This bug was independently discovered by a team of security enginee...
High-Severity OpenSSL Vulnerability allows Hackers to Decrypt HTTPS Traffic

High-Severity OpenSSL Vulnerability allows Hackers to Decrypt HTTPS Traffic

May 05, 2016
OpenSSL has released a series of patches against six vulnerabilities, including a pair of high-severity flaws that could allow attackers to execute malicious code on a web server as well as decrypt HTTPS traffic . OpenSSL is an open-source cryptographic library that is the most widely being used by a significant portion of the Internet services; to cryptographically protect their sensitive Web and e-mail traffic using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. One of the high-severity flaws, CVE-2016-2107 , allows a man-in-the-middle attacker to initiate a " Padding Oracle Attack " that can decrypt HTTPS traffic if the connection uses AES-CBC cipher and the server supports AES-NI. A Padding Oracle flaw weakens the encryption protection by allowing attackers to repeatedly request plaintext data about an encrypted payload content. The Padding Oracle flaw ( exploit code ) was discovered by Juraj Somorovsky using his own developed tool c...
Critical OpenSSL Flaw Allows Hackers to Impersonate Any Trusted SSL Certificate

Critical OpenSSL Flaw Allows Hackers to Impersonate Any Trusted SSL Certificate

Jul 09, 2015
The mysterious security vulnerability in the widely used OpenSSL code library is neither HeartBleed nor FREAK, but it’s critical enough to be patched by sysadmins without any delay. OpenSSL Foundation released the promised patch against a high severity vulnerability in OpenSSL versions 1.0.1n and 1.0.2b, resolving a certificate forgery issue in the implementations of the crypto protocol. The critical vulnerability could allow man-in-the-middle attackers to impersonate cryptographically protected websites, virtual private networks, or e-mail servers, and snoop on encrypted Internet traffic. The vulnerability, ( CVE-2015-1793 ), is due to a problem lies in the certificate verification process. An error in its implementation skipped some security checks on new, untrusted certificates. By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker could circumvent certificate warnings that enable them to force applications into treating an invalid certificate as a legitimate Certificat...
OpenSSL to Patch High Severity Vulnerability this Week

OpenSSL to Patch High Severity Vulnerability this Week

Mar 18, 2015
The OpenSSL Foundation is set to release a handful of patches for undisclosed security vulnerabilities in its widely used open source software later this week, including one that has been rated " high " severity. In a mailing list note published last night, Matt Caswell of the OpenSSL Project Team announced that OpenSSL versions 1.0.2a , 1.0.1m , 1.0.0r , and 0.9.8zf will be released Thursday. " These releases will be made available on 19th March ," Caswell wrote. " They will fix a number of security defects. The highest severity defect fixed by these releases is classified as "high" severity. " OpenSSL is an open-source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. It's a technology that's widely used by almost every websites to encrypt web sessions, even the Apache web server that powers almost half of the websites over the Internet utilizes OpenSSL. Further details on the mystery security vulnerabilities ( CVE-2015-02...
OpenSSL to Patch Undisclosed High Severity Vulnerability this Thursday

OpenSSL to Patch Undisclosed High Severity Vulnerability this Thursday

Jul 07, 2015
Attention Please! System Administrator and anyone relying on OpenSSL should be prepared to switch to a new version of the open-source crypto library that will be released this Thursday 9th July. OpenSSL is a widely used open-source software library that provides encrypted Internet connections using SSL/TLS for majority of websites, as well as other secure services. The new versions of OpenSSL crypto library, versions 1.0.2d and 1.0.1p , address a single security vulnerability classified as "high severity," the OpenSSL Project Team announced on Monday. There isn't more details about the mystery security vulnerability available yet, except for the fact that the security vulnerability doesn't affect the 1.0.0 or 0.9.8 series. "The OpenSSL project team would like to announce the forthcoming release of OpenSSL versions 1.0.2d and 1.0.1p," developer Mark J Cox announced in a mailing list note published yesterday. "These releases will be ...
Billions of Smartphone Users affected by Heartbleed Vulnerability

Billions of Smartphone Users affected by Heartbleed Vulnerability

Apr 13, 2014
Heartbleed has left a worst impression worldwide affecting millions of websites and is also supposed to put millions of Smartphones and tablets users at a great risk. Heartbleed is a critical bug ( CVE-2014-0160 ) in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library, that actually resides in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS/DTLS heartbeat extension, which allows attackers to read portions of the affected server’s memory, potentially revealing users data such as usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers, that the server did not intend to reveal. OpenSSL is a widely-used cryptographic library which implements the SSL and TLS protocol and protects communications on the Internet, and mostly every websites use either SSL or TLS, even the Apache web server that powers almost half of the websites over internet utilizes OpenSSL. But to assume that the users using desktop browsers to visit websites are vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug, will be wrong. Despite 40...
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