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NTAP-20231006-0014 — CVE-2023-40217 Python Vulnerability in NetApp Products

Published 2023-10-06 · Updated 2025-10-29 · Status: Interim · Exploitation: Public · Severity: MEDIUM 5.3 · ONTAP affected: Yes

Official advisory: NTAP-20231006-0014 on security.netapp.com ↗. Affected versions, fixed releases, and workarounds live there — this page is a summary.

Product family: Active IQ Unified Manager · SolidFire / NetApp HCI · ONTAP  |  ONTAP-relevant  |  highest CVSS: 5.3

CVEs in this advisory

What the CVE records say

CVE-2023-40217 — An issue was discovered in Python before 3.8.18, 3.9.x before 3.9.18, 3.10.x before 3.10.13, and 3.11.x before 3.11.5. It primarily affects servers (such as HTTP servers) that use TLS client authentication. If a TLS server-side socket is created, receives data into the socket buffer, and then is closed quickly, there is a brief window where the SSLSocket instance will detect the socket as "not connected" and won't initiate a handshake, but buffered data will still be readable from the socket buffer. This data will not be authenticated if the server-side TLS peer is expecting client certificate authentication, and is indistinguishable from valid TLS stream data. Data is limited in size to the amount that will fit in the buffer. (The TLS connection cannot directly be used for data exfiltration because the vulnerable code path requires that the connection be closed on initialization of the SSLSocket.)

Impact

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could lead to disclosure of sensitive information.

Affected products

Official fixes

References

What to do

  1. 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.
  2. If affected and a fixed release exists, plan the upgrade — see the ONTAP upgrade runbook.
  3. If exploitation is listed as "active", treat remediation as urgent and review exposure (management LIFs, ONTAP S3, SnapMirror endpoints).
  4. Harden in parallel: security hardening baseline and ransomware protection on ONTAP.

Related reading

Browse all ONTAP CVEs → · Security hub