CVE-2023-0466

A flaw was found in OpenSSL. The X509_VERIFY_PARAM_add0_policy() function is documented to enable the certificate policy check when doing certificate verification implicitly. However, implementing the function does not enable the check, allowing certificates with invalid or incorrect policies to pass the certificate verification. Suddenly enabling the policy check could break existing deployments, so it was decided to keep the existing behavior of the X509_VERIFY_PARAM_add0_policy() function. The applications that require OpenSSL to perform certificate policy check need to use X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_policies() or explicitly enable the policy check by calling X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set_flags() with the X509_V_FLAG_POLICY_CHECK flag argument. Certificate policy checks are disabled by default in OpenSSL and are not commonly used by applications.

This vulnerability is rated as moderate because OpenSSL's X509_VERIFY_PARAM_add0_policy() function does not properly enable certificate policy checks as documented. As a result, certificates with invalid or incorrect policies may pass verification, it could lead to policy enforcement issues in applications that rely on this function without explicitly enabling policy checks.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.