OpenSSL security releases do not require Node.js security releases

by Sam Roberts, 2019-09-13

Summary

The OpenSSL Security releases of September 10th, 2019 do not affect Node.js.

Analysis

Our assessment of the security advisory is:

ECDSA remote timing attack (CVE-2019-1547) Not affected. Node supports only named curves for ECDSA signing.
Fork Protection (CVE-2019-1549) Not affected. Node.js always call exec() after fork() so will not duplicate the PRNG state in the forked process.
Padding Oracle in PKCS7_dataDecode and CMS_decrypt_set1_pkey (CVE-2019-1563) Not affected. Node does not support PCKS7 and CMS.

Given this assessment, the OpenSSL updates will be treated as non-security patch updates, and will come out in the regularly scheduled updates to supported release lines.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Shigeki Ohtsu for his rapid analysis of the OpenSSL security advisory.

Contact and future updates

The current Node.js security policy can be found at https://nodejs.org/en/security/, including information on how to report a vulnerability in Node.js.

Subscribe to the low-volume announcement-only nodejs-sec mailing list at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/nodejs-sec to stay up to date on security vulnerabilities and security-related releases of Node.js and the projects maintained in the nodejs GitHub organisation.