Vulnerability · Published May 22, 2025 · Assigned by openssl

CVE-2025-4575The x509 application adds trusted use instead of rejected use

Medium 6.5

In plain English

A medium-severity improper certificate validation in OpenSSL from OpenSSL. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.4% (higher than 32% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS 3.1)6.5Medium
Exploit odds (30 days)0.4%top 67.6% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

Issue summary: Use of -addreject option with the openssl x509 application adds a trusted use instead of a rejected use for a certificate. Impact summary: If a user intends to make a trusted certificate rejected for a particular use it will be instead marked as trusted for that use. A copy & paste error during minor refactoring of the code introduced this issue in the OpenSSL 3.5 version. If, for example, a trusted CA certificate should be trusted only for the purpose of authenticating TLS servers but not for CMS signature verification and the CMS signature verification is intended to be marked as rejected with the -addreject option, the resulting CA certificate will be trusted for CMS signature verification purpose instead. Only users which use the trusted certificate format who use the openssl x509 command line application to add rejected uses are affected by this issue. The issues affecting only the command line application are considered to be Low severity. The FIPS modules in 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue. OpenSSL 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, 3.0, 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 are also not affected by this issue.

Affected packages & fixed versions

EcosystemPackageFixed inAdvisory
Alpine:v3.22openssl3.5.1-r0ALPINE-CVE-2025-4575
Alpine:v3.23openssl3.5.1-r0ALPINE-CVE-2025-4575
Alpine:v3.24openssl3.5.1-r0ALPINE-CVE-2025-4575
Debian:13openssl3.5.0-2DEBIAN-CVE-2025-4575
Debian:14openssl3.5.0-2DEBIAN-CVE-2025-4575

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
OpenSSL OpenSSL 3.5.0 – before 3.5.1

Weakness: CWE-295 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L

References