[patch] TLS Handshake failures can crash imap-login

Hanno Böck hanno at hboeck.de
Fri Apr 24 21:17:20 UTC 2015


Hi,

I tracked down a tricky bug in dovecot that can cause the imap-login
and pop3-login processes to crash on handshake failures.
This can be tested by disabling SSLv3 in the dovecot config
(ssl_protocols = !SSLv2 !SSLv3) and trying to connect with openssl and
forced sslv3 (openssl s_client -ssl3 -connect localhost:995). This
would cause a crash.


What was going on is this:
In ssl-proxy-openssl.c in line 545 in the function ssl_step() the
function ssl_handshake() is called. There SSL_accept() is called. If
SSL_accept failes - because a client sent an invalid packet or
something the server doesn't support or any other reason -
ssl_handle_error() will be called.

ssl_handle_error() will call ssl_proxy_destroy().
ssl_proxy_destroy() will then call ssl_proxy_flush(). And
ssl_proxy_flush will call ssl_step() again. Here we have a loop. Now
when SSL_accept() gets called again on the same context this is an
invalid state for OpenSSL and it crashes.

What to do? In essence, if ssl_proxy_destroy is called it shouldn't try
to finish the handshake if the handshake hasn't even started due to an
error. This can be done by a simple if check, see attached patch. I
think this should do it.

I have seen that a bug that is probably rootet in this has been posted
here before regarding ssl3-disabled configs:
http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/2015-March/100188.html

cu,
-- 
Hanno Böck
http://hboeck.de/

mail/jabber: hanno at hboeck.de
GPG: BBB51E42
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