CVE-2021-44533: Incorrect handling of certificate subject and issuer fields

Node.js < 12.22.9, < 14.18.3, < 16.13.2, and < 17.3.1 did not handle multi-value Relative Distinguished Names correctly. Attackers could craft certificate subjects containing a single-value Relative Distinguished Name that would be interpreted as a multi-value Relative Distinguished Name, for example, in order to inject a Common Name that would allow bypassing the certificate subject verification.Affected versions of Node.js that do not accept multi-value Relative Distinguished Names and are thus not vulnerable to such attacks themselves. However, third-party code that uses node's ambiguous presentation of certificate subjects may be vulnerable.

Node.js could allow a remote attacker to bypass security restrictions, caused by the incorrect handling of multi-value Relative Distinguished Names. By crafting certificate subjects containing a single-value Relative Distinguished Name that would be interpreted as a multi-value Relative Distinguished Name, an attacker could exploit this vulnerability to bypass the certificate subject verification.

— IBM

Node.js did not handle multi-value Relative Distinguished Names correctly. Attackers could craft certificate subjects containing a single-value Relative Distinguished Name that would be interpreted as a multi-value Relative Distinguished Name, for example, in order to inject a Common Name that would allow bypassing the certificate subject verification.

Affected versions of Node.js do not accept multi-value Relative Distinguished Names and are thus not vulnerable to such attacks themselves. However, third-party code that uses node's ambiguous presentation of certificate subjects may be vulnerable.

More details will be available at CVE-2021-44533 after publication.

This vulnerability was reported by Google.

All versions of the 17.x, 16.x, 14.x, and 12.x releases lines.

— Node.Js

Node.js did not handle multi-value Relative Distinguished Names correctly. Attackers could craft certificate subjects containing a single-value Relative Distinguished Name that would be interpreted as a multi-value Relative Distinguished Name, for example, in order to inject a Common Name that would allow bypassing the certificate subject verification.

Affected versions of Node.js do not accept multi-value Relative Distinguished Names and are thus not vulnerable to such attacks themselves. However, third-party code that uses node's ambiguous presentation of certificate subjects may be vulnerable.

Reference: https://nodejs.org/en/blog/vulnerability/jan-2022-security-releases/

— Red Hat

Node.js did not handle multi-value Relative Distinguished Names correctly. Attackers could craft certificate subjects containing a single-value Relative Distinguished Name that would be interpreted as a multi-value Relative Distinguished Name, for example, in order to inject a Common Name that would allow bypassing the certificate subject verification. See https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2021-44533 for more details.

— Node.Js