Every CVE Search/ Get API key

CVE-2017-7520

OpenVPN versions before 2.4.3 and before 2.3.17 are vulnerable to denial-of-service and/or...

7.4 HighFix available

OpenVPN versions before 2.4.3 and before 2.3.17 are vulnerable to denial-of-service and/or possibly sensitive memory leak triggered by man-in-the-middle attacker.

Attack profile

How easy it is to exploit

Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges needed
None
User interaction
None

What an attacker can affect

Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
High

Exploit likelihood

3.38%Up 2.3 points since Apr 14, 2021
90%50%10%1%

What each source reports

NVD Score used 7.4

OpenVPN versions before 2.4.3 and before 2.3.17 are vulnerable to denial-of-service and/or possibly sensitive memory leak triggered by man-in-the-middle attacker.

Record
CVE-2017-7520
CVSS 3.0
7.4 HighCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
CVSS 2.0
4.0 MediumAV:N/AC:H/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:P
Weakness
CWE-200, CWE-125
Updated
2026-11-02
CVE List No score

OpenVPN versions before 2.4.3 and before 2.3.17 are vulnerable to denial-of-service and/or possibly sensitive memory leak triggered by man-in-the-middle attacker.

Record
CVE-2017-7520
Weakness
CWE-200
Updated
2026-11-02
EUVDEUVD-2017-16537 No score

OpenVPN versions before 2.4.3 and before 2.3.17 are vulnerable to denial-of-service and/or possibly sensitive memory leak triggered by man-in-the-middle attacker.

Record
EUVD-2017-16537
Updated
2026-11-03
GitHub AdvisoriesGHSA-757r-jmm6-p24p 7.4

OpenVPN versions before 2.4.3 and before 2.3.17 are vulnerable to denial-of-service and/or...

OpenVPN versions before 2.4.3 and before 2.3.17 are vulnerable to denial-of-service and/or possibly sensitive memory leak triggered by man-in-the-middle attacker.

Record
GHSA-757r-jmm6-p24p
CVSS 3.0
7.4 HighCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-125, CWE-200
Updated
2026-11-02
OSV 7.4

OpenVPN versions before 2.4.3 and before 2.3.17 are vulnerable to denial-of-service and/or possibly sensitive memory leak triggered by man-in-the-middle attacker.

Record
CVE-2017-7520
CVSS 3.0
7.4 HighCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVDEBIAN-CVE-2017-7520 7.4

OpenVPN versions before 2.4.3 and before 2.3.17 are vulnerable to denial-of-service and/or possibly sensitive memory leak triggered by man-in-the-middle attacker.

Record
DEBIAN-CVE-2017-7520
CVSS 3.0
7.4 HighCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
Updated
2026-11-02
Show 5 moreShow less
OSVUBUNTU-CVE-2017-7520 7.4

OpenVPN versions before 2.4.3 and before 2.3.17 are vulnerable to denial-of-service and/or possibly sensitive memory leak triggered by man-in-the-middle attacker.

Record
UBUNTU-CVE-2017-7520
CVSS 3.0
7.4 HighCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVMGASA-2017-0224 No score

Updated openvpn packages fix security vulnerabilities

It was possible to trigger an assertion by sending a malformed IPv6 packet. That issue could have been abused to remotely shutdown an openvpn server or client, if IPv6 and --mssfix were enabled and if the IPv6 networks used inside the VPN were known (CVE-2017-7508).

Some parts of the certificate-parsing code did not always clear all allocated memory. This would have allowed clients to leak a few bytes of memory for each connection attempt, thereby facilitating a (quite inefficient) DoS attack on the server (CVE-2017-7512).

If clients used a HTTP proxy with NTLM authentication, a man-in-the-middle attacker between client and proxy could cause the client to crash or disclose at most 96 bytes of stack memory. The disclosed stack memory was likely to contain the proxy password. If the proxy password had not been reused, this was unlikely to compromise the security of the OpenVPN tunnel itself. Clients who did not use the --http-proxy option with ntlm2 authentication were not affected (CVE-2017-7520).

The ASN1 parsing code contained a bug that could have resulted in some buffers being free()d twice, and this issue could have potentially been triggered remotely by a VPN peer (CVE-2017-7521).

Record
MGASA-2017-0224
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVSUSE-SU-2017:1635-1 No score

Security update for openvpn

This update for openvpn fixes the following issues:

  • Some parts of the certificate-parsing code did not always clear all allocated memory. This would have allowed clients to leak a few bytes of memory for each connection attempt, thereby facilitating a (quite inefficient) DoS attack on the server. [bsc#1044947, CVE-2017-7521]

  • The ASN1 parsing code contained a bug that could have resulted in some buffers being free()d twice, and this issue could have potentially been triggered remotely by a VPN peer. [bsc#1044947, CVE-2017-7521]

  • If clients used a HTTP proxy with NTLM authentication, a man-in-the-middle attacker between client and proxy could cause the client to crash or disclose at most 96 bytes of stack memory. The disclosed stack memory was likely to contain the proxy password. If the proxy password had not been reused, this was unlikely to compromise the security of the OpenVPN tunnel itself. Clients who did not use the --http-proxy option with ntlm2 authentication were not affected. [bsc#1044947, CVE-2017-7520]

  • It was possible to trigger an assertion by sending a malformed IPv6 packet. That issue could have been abused to remotely shutdown an openvpn server or client, if IPv6 and --mssfix were enabled and if the IPv6 networks used inside the VPN were known. [bsc#1044947, CVE-2017-7508]

Record
SUSE-SU-2017:1635-1
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVSUSE-SU-2017:1718-1 No score

Security update for openvpn-openssl1

This update for openvpn-openssl1 fixes the following issues:

  • Some parts of the certificate-parsing code did not always clear all allocated memory. This would have allowed clients to leak a few bytes of memory for each connection attempt, thereby facilitating a (quite inefficient) DoS attack on the server. [bsc#1044947, CVE-2017-7521]

  • The ASN1 parsing code contained a bug that could have resulted in some buffers being free()d twice, and this issue could have potentially been triggered remotely by a VPN peer. [bsc#1044947, CVE-2017-7521]

  • If clients used a HTTP proxy with NTLM authentication, a man-in-the-middle attacker between client and proxy could cause the client to crash or disclose at most 96 bytes of stack memory. The disclosed stack memory was likely to contain the proxy password. If the proxy password had not been reused, this was unlikely to compromise the security of the OpenVPN tunnel itself. Clients who did not use the --http-proxy option with ntlm2 authentication were not affected. [bsc#1044947, CVE-2017-7520]

  • It was possible to trigger an assertion by sending a malformed IPv6 packet. That issue could have been abused to remotely shutdown an openvpn server or client, if IPv6 and --mssfix were enabled and if the IPv6 networks used inside the VPN were known. [bsc#1044947, CVE-2017-7508]

  • The installed sample configuration file was updated to comply to FIPS requirements. [bsc#988522]

  • Remedy large latencies on the openVPN server during authentication process. [bsc#959511]

  • Fix potential denial-of-service attacks found during independent audits. [bsc#1038713, bsc#1038709, CVE-2017-7478, bsc#1038711, CVE-2017-7479]

Record
SUSE-SU-2017:1718-1
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVUSN-3339-1 No score

openvpn vulnerabilities

Karthikeyan Bhargavan and Gaëtan Leurent discovered that 64-bit block ciphers are vulnerable to a birthday attack. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to recover cleartext data. Fixing this issue requires a configuration change to switch to a different cipher. This update adds a warning to the log file when a 64-bit block cipher is in use. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.10. (CVE-2016-6329)

It was discovered that OpenVPN incorrectly handled rollover of packet ids. An authenticated remote attacker could use this issue to cause OpenVPN to crash, resulting in a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.10. (CVE-2017-7479)

Guido Vranken discovered that OpenVPN incorrectly handled certain malformed IPv6 packets. A remote attacker could use this issue to cause OpenVPN to crash, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2017-7508)

Guido Vranken discovered that OpenVPN incorrectly handled an HTTP proxy with NTLM authentication. A remote attacker could use this issue to cause OpenVPN clients to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or possibly expose sensitive memory contents. (CVE-2017-7520)

Guido Vranken discovered that OpenVPN incorrectly handled certain x509 extensions. A remote attacker could use this issue to cause OpenVPN to crash, resulting in a denial of service. (CVE-2017-7521)

Record
USN-3339-1
Updated
2026-11-02

Affected products

Affected packages

Affected packages
PackageAffectedFixed
openvpn
Debian:12
before 2.4.3-1
2.4.3-1
openvpn
Debian:13
before 2.4.3-1
2.4.3-1
openvpn
Debian:14
before 2.4.3-1
2.4.3-1
openvpn
Debian:7
before 2.2.1-8+deb7u5, plus listed versions
2.2.1-82.2.1-8+deb7u12.2.1-8+deb7u22.2.1-8+deb7u32.2.1-8+deb7u4
2.2.1-8+deb7u5
openvpn
Debian:8
before 2.3.4-5+deb8u2, plus listed versions
2.3.4-52.3.4-5+deb8u1
2.3.4-5+deb8u2
openvpn
Debian:9
before 2.4.0-6+deb9u1, plus listed versions
2.4.0-62.4.0-6+deb9u1~bpo8+1
2.4.0-6+deb9u1
openvpn
Mageia:5
before 2.3.17-1.mga5
2.3.17-1.mga5
openvpn
SUSE:OpenStack Cloud 6
before 2.3.8-16.17.1
2.3.8-16.17.1
openvpn
SUSE:Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 SP2
before 2.3.8-16.17.1
2.3.8-16.17.1
openvpn
SUSE:Linux Enterprise Server for Raspberry Pi 12 SP2
before 2.3.8-16.17.1
2.3.8-16.17.1
Show 9 moreShow less
Affected packages
PackageAffectedFixed
openvpn
SUSE:Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 12
before 2.3.8-16.17.1
2.3.8-16.17.1
openvpn
SUSE:Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 12 SP1
before 2.3.8-16.17.1
2.3.8-16.17.1
openvpn
SUSE:Linux Enterprise Server 12-LTSS
before 2.3.8-16.17.1
2.3.8-16.17.1
openvpn
SUSE:Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1-LTSS
before 2.3.8-16.17.1
2.3.8-16.17.1
openvpn
SUSE:Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2
before 2.3.8-16.17.1
2.3.8-16.17.1
openvpn
SUSE:Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 12 SP2
before 2.3.8-16.17.1
2.3.8-16.17.1
openvpn-openssl1
SUSE:Linux Enterprise Server 11-SECURITY
before 2.3.2-0.9.1
2.3.2-0.9.1
openvpn
Ubuntu:14.04:LTS
before 2.3.2-7ubuntu3.2, plus listed versions
2.3.2-4ubuntu12.3.2-5ubuntu12.3.2-7ubuntu12.3.2-7ubuntu22.3.2-7ubuntu32.3.2-7ubuntu3.1
2.3.2-7ubuntu3.2
openvpn
Ubuntu:16.04:LTS
before 2.3.10-1ubuntu2.1, plus listed versions
2.3.7-1ubuntu12.3.7-2ubuntu12.3.8-1ubuntu12.3.10-1ubuntu12.3.10-1ubuntu2
2.3.10-1ubuntu2.1

History

History
RecordedChangedSources
aliasesEUVD
first indexedCVE List, GitHub Advisories, NVD, OSV

Dates are when Every CVE recorded each change. Upstream dates may differ.

In short

CVE-2017-7520 is a high vulnerability (CVSS 7.4) in Openvpn, published June 21, 2017. No source lists public exploit code. EPSS puts the chance of exploitation in the next 30 days at 3.38%, the 88th percentile. Fixed in openvpn 2.4.3-1.

References

Show 27 moreShow less
MoveEnter Open