CVE-2021-4044: Netapp 500f Firmware

High severity, CVSS 7.5. EPSS: 50.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

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).

Affected products

  • Netapp 500f Firmware: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp a250 Firmware: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp Cloud Backup: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp E-Series Performance Analyzer: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp h300e Firmware: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp h300s Firmware: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp h410c Firmware: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp h410s Firmware: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp h500e Firmware: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp h500s Firmware: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp h700e Firmware: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp h700s Firmware: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp Ontap Select Deploy Administration Utility: affected versions not specified
  • Netapp Snapcenter: affected versions not specified
  • Node.js Node.js: from 17.0.0, before 17.3.0 (fixed in 17.3.0)
  • OpenSSL OpenSSL: before 1.0.2 (fixed in 1.0.2); version 1.1.0 only; version 3.0.0 only

Published 2021-12-14. Last modified 2026-06-17.