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High Severity Vulnerability

This vulnerability has been rated as High severity. Immediate action is recommended.

CVE-2024-4741

High
Low Medium High Critical
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: Nov 13, 2024
Last Modified: Nov 04, 2025

Vulnerability Description

Issue summary: Calling the OpenSSL API function SSL_free_buffers may cause
memory to be accessed that was previously freed in some situations

Impact summary: A use after free can have a range of potential consequences such
as the corruption of valid data, crashes or execution of arbitrary code.
However, only applications that directly call the SSL_free_buffers function are
affected by this issue. Applications that do not call this function are not
vulnerable. Our investigations indicate that this function is rarely used by
applications.

The SSL_free_buffers function is used to free the internal OpenSSL buffer used
when processing an incoming record from the network. The call is only expected
to succeed if the buffer is not currently in use. However, two scenarios have
been identified where the buffer is freed even when still in use.

The first scenario occurs where a record header has been received from the
network and processed by OpenSSL, but the full record body has not yet arrived.
In this case calling SSL_free_buffers will succeed even though a record has only
been partially processed and the buffer is still in use.

The second scenario occurs where a full record containing application data has
been received and processed by OpenSSL but the application has only read part of
this data. Again a call to SSL_free_buffers will succeed even though the buffer
is still in use.

While these scenarios could occur accidentally during normal operation a
malicious attacker could attempt to engineer a stituation where this occurs.
We are not aware of this issue being actively exploited.

The FIPS modules in 3.3, 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue.

CVSS Metrics

Common Vulnerability Scoring System

Vector String:

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack Vector
N
Attack Complexity
L
Privileges Required
N
User Interaction
N
Scope
U
Confidentiality
N
Integrity
N
Availability
H

Available Security Patches

3 patches available from vendors

View All Patches
Microsoft

2025-Apr-CVE-2024-4741

CVE-2024-4741: None

Severity
Unknown
Released
Oct 01, 2025
Security Update
Microsoft

2024-Nov-CVE-2024-4741

CVE-2024-4741: Use After Free with SSL_free_buffers

Severity
Unknown
Released
Sep 04, 2025
Security Update
Oracle

CPUJAN2025

Oracle Critical Patch Update Advisory - January 2025

Severity
Critical
Released
Jan 21, 2025
Restart Required
Security Update

Severity Details

7.5
out of 10.0
High

Weakness Type (CWE)

CWE-416 Top 25 #12

Use After Free

Description
The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations…
Exploit Likelihood
High
Typical Severity
High
Abstraction Level
Variant

Key Information

Published Date
November 13, 2024