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CRITICAL severity

CVE-2021-3711 — openssl-src

CRITICAL

CVE-2021-3711 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) CWE-120 vulnerability in openssl-src. EPSS puts its 30-day exploitation probability at 87.8% (100th percentile). A fix is available for openssl-src — see the affected versions and patch details below.

SM2 Decryption Buffer Overflow

Also known asGHSA-5ww6-px42-wc85RUSTSEC-2021-0097
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 29, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

No confirmed exploitation observed yet

  • CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
  • A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
  • CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2021-3711.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
87.8%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Very High Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs100th percentile — riskier than 100% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%33.3%66.7%100.0%2.3%87.8%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

Where this sits among everything scored

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected
🦀openssl-src

Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.

Description

In order to decrypt SM2 encrypted data an application is expected to call the API function EVP_PKEY_decrypt(). Typically an application will call this function twice. The first time, on entry, the "out" parameter can be NULL and, on exit, the "outlen" parameter is populated with the buffer size required to hold the decrypted plaintext. The application can then allocate a sufficiently sized buffer and call EVP_PKEY_decrypt() again, but this time passing a non-NULL value for the "out" parameter. A bug in the implementation of the SM2 decryption code means that the calculation of the buffer size required to hold the plaintext returned by the first call to EVP_PKEY_decrypt() can be smaller than the actual size required by the second call. This can lead to a buffer overflow when EVP_PKEY_decrypt() is called by the application a second time with a buffer that is too small. A malicious attacker who is able present SM2 content for decryption to an application could cause attacker chosen data to overflow the buffer by up to a maximum of 62 bytes altering the contents of other data held after the buffer, possibly changing application behaviour or causing the application to crash. The location of the buffer is application dependent but is typically heap allocated. Fixed in OpenSSL 1.1.1l (Affected 1.1.1-1.1.1k).

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🦀crates.ioopenssl-srcall versions111.16.0cargo update -p openssl-src --precise 111.16.0

Affected Products

31 products · 42 configurations
OS
debian linuxdebian
2 versions
10.011.0
Application
active iq unified managernetapp
all
Application
clustered data ontapnetapp
all
Application
clustered data ontap antivirus connectornetapp
all
Application
e-series santricity os controllernetapp
≥ 11.0 && ≤ 11.50.2
range
Application
hci management nodenetapp
all

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency
  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for openssl-src, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update openssl-src to 111.16.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-3711 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    Constrain what reaches the vulnerable code: limit the size and shape of untrusted input, isolate the affected component in a sandboxed or least-privileged process, and enable the platform's memory-safety mitigations (ASLR, stack protector, hardened allocator) so an out-of-bounds access is more likely to fail closed than to be exploitable.

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.

UbuntuCRITICAL

Frequently Asked Questions

In order to decrypt SM2 encrypted data an application is expected to call the API function EVP_PKEY_decrypt(). Typically an application will call this function twice. The first time, on entry, the "out" parameter can be NULL and, on exit, the "outlen" parameter is populated with the buffer size required to hold the decrypted plaintext. The application can then allocate a sufficiently sized buffer and call EVP_PKEY_decrypt() again, but this time passing a non-NULL value for the "out" parameter. A bug in the implementation of the SM2 decryption code means that the calculation of the buffer size
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is CVE-2021-3711 in your dependencies?

Find it across crates.io, including transitive dependencies.

CVE-2021-3711: openssl-src — Fixed in 111.16.0