OpenSSL security releases do not require Node.js security releases

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

  1

  exec()

  after

  1

  fork()

  so will not
  duplicate the PRNG state in the forked process.

• Padding Oracle in

  1	PKCS7_dataDecode

  and

  1	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.