Home / Security / Advisories / NTAP-20211229-0003

NTAP-20211229-0003 — CVE-2021-4044 OpenSSL Vulnerability in NetApp Products

Published 2021-12-29 · Updated 2024-03-07 · Status: Final · Exploitation: Public · Severity: HIGH 7.5 · ONTAP affected: Yes

Official advisory: NTAP-20211229-0003 on security.netapp.com ↗. Affected versions, fixed releases, and workarounds live there — this page is a summary.

Product family: Brocade SAN firmware · Baseboard management controllers · Cloud Backup / AltaVault / SteelStore · E-Series / SANtricity · SolidFire / NetApp HCI · ONTAP · SnapCenter | ONTAP-relevant | highest CVSS: 7.5

CVEs in this advisory

CVE-2021-4044 — HIGH · CVSS 7.5 · site index

What the CVE records say

CVE-2021-4044 — 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).

Impact

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could lead to Denial of Service (DoS).

Affected products

Brocade Fabric Operating System Firmware
FAS/AFF Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) - A250/500f/C250
NetApp Cloud Backup (formerly AltaVault)
NetApp Cloud Backup OST Plug-in (formerly AltaVault OST Plug-in)
NetApp E-Series Performance Analyzer
NetApp HCI Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) - H300S/H500S/H700S/H410S
NetApp HCI Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) - H410C
ONTAP Select Deploy administration utility
SnapCenter

Official fixes

FAS/AFF Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) - A250/500f/C250 — vendor fix ↗
NetApp E-Series Performance Analyzer — vendor fix ↗
ONTAP Select Deploy administration utility — vendor fix ↗
SnapCenter — vendor fix ↗

References

https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv/20211214.txt ↗

What to do

Check the affected products listed above against the official advisory's affected-versions table — that is where the exact ONTAP 9 release, ONTAP tool, or management product versions are named.
If affected and a fixed release exists, plan the upgrade — see the ONTAP upgrade runbook.
If exploitation is listed as "active", treat remediation as urgent and review exposure (management LIFs, ONTAP S3, SnapMirror endpoints).
Harden in parallel: security hardening baseline and ransomware protection on ONTAP.