CVE-2022-3996

HIGH

Denial of service by double-checked locking in openssl-src

Published December 13, 2022Updated February 4, 2026Source: osv

Summary

If an X.509 certificate contains a malformed policy constraint and policy processing is enabled, then a write lock will be taken twice recursively. On some operating systems (most widely: Windows) this results in a denial of service when the affected process hangs. Policy processing being enabled on a publicly facing server is not considered to be a common setup. Policy processing is enabled by passing the `-policy' argument to the command line utilities or by calling either `X509_VERIFY_PARAM_add0_policy()' or `X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_policies()' functions.

Remediation

Upgrade to the fixed version using your package manager.

Cargo

Update openssl-src to 300.0.12 or later

cargo update -p openssl-src --precise 300.0.12

After upgrading, run your dependency scanner again to confirm the vulnerability is resolved.

Affected Packages (1)

Package	Ecosystem	Affected	Fixed In
openssl-src	crates.io	All versions	300.0.12

Vulnerability Classification

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) identifiers for this vulnerability type.

CWE-667
View on MITRE

CVSS Score Breakdown

What the CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) 7.5 score means for each attack dimension.

Attack Vector

Network

Attack Complexity

Low

Privileges Required

None

User Interaction

None

Scope

Unchanged

Confidentiality

None

Integrity

None

Availability

High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2022-3996?: Denial of service by double-checked locking in openssl-src This vulnerability has been assigned a severity rating of HIGH (CVSS score: 7.5/10).
How do I check if my project is affected by CVE-2022-3996?: CVE-2022-3996 affects openssl-src. Use GeekWala's free vulnerability scanner to check your dependencies against CVE-2022-3996 and 200,000+ other known vulnerabilities.

Severity & Exploitability

CVSS Score

7.5

High exploitability or significant impact. Prioritize remediation within days.

Also Known As

GHSA-vr8j-hgmm-jh9r

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