SB2022022821 - Multiple vulnerabilities in IBM Flex System switch firmware products



SB2022022821 - Multiple vulnerabilities in IBM Flex System switch firmware products

Published: February 28, 2022 Updated: February 11, 2026

Security Bulletin ID SB2022022821
Severity
Medium
Patch available
YES
Number of vulnerabilities 4
Exploitation vector Remote access
Highest impact Denial of service

Breakdown by Severity

Medium 100%
  • Low
  • Medium
  • High
  • Critical

Description

This security bulletin contains information about 4 secuirty vulnerabilities.


1) NULL pointer dereference (CVE-ID: CVE-2020-1971)

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.

The vulnerability exists due to a NULL pointer dereference error. A remote attacker can trigger denial of service conditions via the API functions TS_RESP_verify_response and TS_RESP_verify_token). If an attacker can control both items being compared then that attacker could trigger a crash. For example if the attacker can trick a client or server into checking a malicious certificate against a malicious CRL then this may occur. Note that some applications automatically download CRLs based on a URL embedded in a certificate. This checking happens prior to the signatures on the certificate and CRL being verified. OpenSSL's s_server, s_client and verify tools have support for the "-crl_download" option which implements automatic CRL downloading and this attack has been demonstrated to work against those tools. Note that an unrelated bug means that affected versions of OpenSSL cannot parse or construct correct encodings of EDIPARTYNAME. However it is possible to construct a malformed EDIPARTYNAME that OpenSSL's parser will accept and hence trigger this attack.


2) Input validation error (CVE-ID: CVE-2021-23840)

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.

The vulnerability exists due to insufficient validation of user-supplied input during EVP_CipherUpdate, EVP_EncryptUpdate and EVP_DecryptUpdate calls. A remote attacker can pass specially crafted input to the application and perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.


3) NULL pointer dereference (CVE-ID: CVE-2021-23841)

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.

The vulnerability exists due to a NULL pointer dereference error within the X509_issuer_and_serial_hash() function when parsing the issuer field in the X509 certificate. A remote attacker can supply a specially crafted certificate, trigger a NULL pointer dereference error and perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.


4) Out-of-bounds read (CVE-ID: CVE-2021-3712)

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to gain access to potentially sensitive information.

The vulnerability exists due to a boundary condition when processing ASN.1 strings related to a confusion with NULL termination of strings in array. A remote attacker can pass specially crafted data to the application to trigger an out-of-bounds read error and read contents of memory on the system or perform a denial of service (DoS) attack.


Remediation

Install update from vendor's website.