CVE-2020-1971: Debian Linux

Medium severity, CVSS 5.9. EPSS: 7.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

The X.509 GeneralName type is a generic type for representing different types of names. One of those name types is known as EDIPartyName. OpenSSL provides a function GENERAL_NAME_cmp which compares different instances of a GENERAL_NAME to see if they are equal or not. This function behaves incorrectly when both GENERAL_NAMEs contain an EDIPARTYNAME. A NULL pointer dereference and a crash may occur leading to a possible denial of service attack. OpenSSL itself uses the GENERAL_NAME_cmp function for two purposes: 1) Comparing CRL distribution point names between an available CRL and a CRL distribution point embedded in an X509 certificate 2) When verifying that a timestamp response token signer matches the timestamp authority name (exposed via the API functions TS_RESP_verify_response and TS_RESP_verify_token) If an attacker can control both items being compared then that attacker could trigger a crash. For example if the attacker can trick a client or server into checking a malicious certificate against a malicious CRL then this may occur. Note that some applications automatically download CRLs based on a URL embedded in a certificate. This checking happens prior to the signatures on the certificate and CRL being verified. OpenSSL's s_server, s_client and verify tools have support for the "-crl_download" option which implements automatic CRL downloading and this attack has been demonstrated to work against those tools. Note that an unrelated bug means that affected versions of OpenSSL cannot parse or construct correct encodings of EDIPARTYNAME. However it is possible to construct a malformed EDIPARTYNAME that OpenSSL's parser will accept and hence trigger this attack. All OpenSSL 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 versions are affected by this issue. Other OpenSSL releases are out of support and have not been checked. Fixed in OpenSSL 1.1.1i (Affected 1.1.1-1.1.1h). Fixed in OpenSSL 1.0.2x (Affected 1.0.2-1.0.2w).

Affected products

Debian Debian Linux: version 9.0 only; version 10.0 only
Fedoraproject Fedora: version 32 only; version 33 only
Netapp Active Iq Unified Manager: affected versions not specified
Netapp Aff a250 Firmware: affected versions not specified
Netapp Clustered Data Ontap Antivirus Connector: affected versions not specified
Netapp Data Ontap: affected versions not specified
Netapp E-Series Santricity OS Controller: from 11.0.0, up to and including 11.60.3
Netapp EF600A Firmware: affected versions not specified
Netapp Hci Compute Node: affected versions not specified
Netapp Hci Management Node: affected versions not specified
Netapp Hci Storage Node: affected versions not specified
Netapp Manageability Software Development Kit: affected versions not specified
Netapp Oncommand Insight: affected versions not specified
Netapp Oncommand Workflow Automation: affected versions not specified
Netapp Plug-In For Symantec Netbackup: affected versions not specified
Netapp Santricity Smi-S Provider: affected versions not specified
Netapp Snapcenter: affected versions not specified
Netapp Solidfire: affected versions not specified
Node.js Node.js: from 10.0.0, up to and including 10.12.0; from 10.13.0, before 10.23.1 (fixed in 10.23.1); from 12.0.0, up to and including 12.12.0; from 12.13.0, before 12.20.1 (fixed in 12.20.1); from 14.0.0, up to and including 14.14.0; from 14.15.0, before 14.15.4 (fixed in 14.15.4); …
OpenSSL OpenSSL: from 1.0.2, before 1.0.2x (fixed in 1.0.2x); from 1.1.1, before 1.1.1i (fixed in 1.1.1i)
Oracle API Gateway: version 11.1.2.4.0 only
Oracle Business Intelligence: version 5.5.0.0.0 only; version 5.9.0.0.0 only; version 12.2.1.3.0 only; version 12.2.1.4.0 only
Oracle Communications Cloud Native Core Network Function Cloud Native Environment: version 1.10.0 only
Oracle Communications Diameter Intelligence Hub: from 8.0.0, up to and including 8.1.0; from 8.2.0, up to and including 8.2.3
Oracle Communications Session Border Controller: version cz8.2 only; version cz8.3 only; version cz8.4 only
and 19 more

Published 2020-12-08. Last modified 2026-06-17.