An issue was discovered in wolfSSL before 5.5.0 (when --enable-session-ticket is used); however, only version 5.3.0 is exploitable. Man-in-the-middle attackers or a malicious server can crash TLS 1.2 clients during a handshake. If an attacker injects a large ticket (more than 256 bytes) into a NewSessionTicket message in a TLS 1.2 handshake, and the client has a non-empty session cache, the session cache frees a pointer that points to unallocated memory, causing the client to crash with a "free(): invalid pointer" message. NOTE: It is likely that this is also exploitable during TLS 1.3 handshakes between a client and a malicious server. With TLS 1.3, it is not possible to exploit this as a man-in-the-middle.

References

• https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-38153
• wolfSSL/wolfssl#5476
• https://github.com/trailofbits/tlspuffin
• https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl/releases
• https://www.wolfssl.com/docs/security-vulnerabilities/
• http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2023/Jan/8
• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/170605/wolfSSL-5.3.0-Denial-Of-Service.html
• https://blog.trailofbits.com/2023/01/12/wolfssl-vulnerabilities-tlspuffin-fuzzing-ssh/