The public API function BIO_new_NDEF
is a helper function used for streaming ASN.1 data via a BIO
. It is primarily used internally to OpenSSL to support the SMIME, CMS and PKCS7 streaming capabilities, but may also be called directly by end user applications.
The function receives a BIO
from the caller, prepends a new BIO_f_asn1
filter BIO
onto the front of it to form a BIO
chain, and then returns the new head of the BIO
chain to the caller. Under certain conditions, for example if a CMS recipient public key is invalid, the new filter BIO
is freed and the function returns a NULL
result indicating a failure. However, in this case, the BIO
chain is not properly cleaned up and the BIO
passed by the caller still retains internal pointers to the previously freed filter BIO
. If the caller then goes on to call BIO_pop()
on the BIO
then a use-after-free will occur. This will most likely result in a crash.
This scenario occurs directly in the internal function B64_write_ASN1()
which may cause BIO_new_NDEF()
to be called and will subsequently call BIO_pop()
on the BIO
. This internal function is in turn called by the public API functions PEM_write_bio_ASN1_stream
, PEM_write_bio_CMS_stream
, PEM_write_bio_PKCS7_stream
, SMIME_write_ASN1
, SMIME_write_CMS
and SMIME_write_PKCS7
.
Other public API functions that may be impacted by this include i2d_ASN1_bio_stream
, BIO_new_CMS
, BIO_new_PKCS7
, i2d_CMS_bio_stream
and i2d_PKCS7_bio_stream
.