CVE-2014-8628 in PolarSSL
Summary
by MITRE
Memory leak in PolarSSL before 1.2.12 and 1.3.x before 1.3.9 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via a large number of crafted X.509 certificates. NOTE: this identifier has been SPLIT per ADT3 due to different affected versions. See CVE-2014-9744 for the ClientHello message issue.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 06/13/2022
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2014-8628 represents a critical memory leak flaw within the PolarSSL cryptographic library that affected versions prior to 1.2.12 and 1.3.x prior to 1.3.9. This vulnerability resides in the X.509 certificate processing functionality of the library, which is widely used in embedded systems, IoT devices, and network appliances that require secure communication capabilities. The issue manifests when the library processes a large number of crafted X.509 certificates, leading to uncontrolled memory consumption that can ultimately result in system resource exhaustion and denial of service conditions.
The technical root cause of this vulnerability stems from inadequate memory management within the certificate parsing routines of PolarSSL. When processing X.509 certificates, the library fails to properly release allocated memory resources after certificate validation operations, particularly when handling malformed or specially crafted certificates. This memory leak occurs in the certificate chain processing logic where intermediate certificates are parsed and validated, but the memory allocated for certificate structures is not consistently freed, creating a progressive memory consumption pattern that worsens with each processed certificate.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability poses significant risks to systems that rely on PolarSSL for secure communications, particularly in environments where certificate validation occurs frequently or where systems may be exposed to untrusted certificate inputs. The vulnerability is particularly dangerous in resource-constrained environments such as embedded devices, IoT gateways, and network appliances where memory resources are limited and the impact of memory exhaustion is more severe. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability by sending a large number of crafted X.509 certificates to a vulnerable system, causing progressive memory consumption that can lead to system crashes, application hangs, or complete service disruption.
The vulnerability aligns with CWE-401, which describes improper handling of memory allocation and deallocation, and can be mapped to ATT&CK technique T1499.001 for resource exhaustion attacks. Systems utilizing PolarSSL for TLS/SSL operations, certificate validation, and secure communications are at risk, particularly when these systems process certificates from untrusted sources or when they are exposed to network-based attacks. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of proper memory management in cryptographic libraries, as memory leaks in security-critical components can be exploited to undermine system availability and reliability.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability include immediate upgrading of PolarSSL to versions 1.2.12 or 1.3.9 and later, which contain the necessary memory management fixes. Organizations should also implement certificate validation policies that limit the number of certificates processed in a single session and consider implementing rate limiting or connection throttling mechanisms to prevent abuse of the vulnerability. Additionally, monitoring systems should be deployed to detect unusual memory consumption patterns that may indicate exploitation attempts. The vulnerability highlights the critical importance of thorough memory management testing in cryptographic libraries and the need for regular security updates to address such memory-related issues that can compromise system availability.