Multiple Vulnerabilities in OpenSSL Affecting Cisco Products: March 2016

On March 1, 2016, the OpenSSL Software Foundation released a security advisory detailing seven vulnerabilities and a new attack, referred to as the Decrypting RSA with Obsolete and Weakened eNcryption (DROWN) attack. A total of eight Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) were assigned. Of the eight CVEs, three relate to the DROWN attack. The remaining CVEs track low severity vulnerabilities.

DROWN is a cross-protocol attack that actively exploits weaknesses in SSL Version 2 (SSLv2) to decrypt passively collected Transport Layer Security (TLS) sessions. DROWN does not exploit a vulnerability in the TLS protocol or any specific implementation of the protocol.

To execute a successful DROWN attack, the attacker must identify a server that supports both SSLv2 and TLS, and uses the same RSA key pair for both protocols. The attacker must also be able to collect TLS traffic for the server.

This advisory will be updated as additional information becomes available.

This advisory is available at the following link:

https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20160302-openssl[“https://sec.cloudapps.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20160302-openssl”]