CVE-2017-11770 — System.Security.Cryptogra…
HIGHCVE-2017-11770 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-295 vulnerability in System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates. A fix is available for System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Improper Certificate Validation
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2017-11770 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.NETMicrosoft.NETCore.AppReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects NuGet packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
.NET Core 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 allow an unauthenticated attacker to remotely cause a denial of service attack against a .NET Core web application by improperly parsing certificate data. A denial of service vulnerability exists when .NET Core improperly handles parsing certificate data, aka ".NET CORE Denial Of Service Vulnerability".
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| .NETNuGet | System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates | ≥ 4.0.0&&< 4.1.2 | 4.1.2dotnet add package System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates --version 4.1.2 |
| .NETNuGet | Microsoft.NETCore.App | ≥ 1.0.0&&< 2.0.3 | 2.0.3dotnet add package Microsoft.NETCore.App --version 2.0.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates to 4.1.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2017-11770 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2017-11770 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2017-11770. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| .NET Core on Red Hat Enterprise Linux | rh-dotnet20-dotnet-0:2.0.3-4.el7 | RHSA-2017:3248 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2017-11770 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2017-11770 across NuGet dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.