Certificate verification bypass via ambiguous RDN strings
Published Feb 24, 2022 · Updated Apr 30, 2025
Improper certificate validation in Node.js allows remote attackers to bypass certificate subject checks in affected third-party code. The X.509 conversion path encoded subject and issuer names as strings without escaping plus signs, so a single-value RDN could appear to contain an injected Common Name. Exploitation requires third-party code to trust that ambiguous representation; Node.js itself did not parse multi-value RDNs and was not directly susceptible.
Summary
What happened
Improper certificate validation in Node.js allows remote attackers to bypass certificate subject checks in affected third-party code. The X.509 conversion path encoded subject and issuer names as strings without escaping plus signs, so a single-value RDN could appear to contain an injected Common Name. Exploitation requires third-party code to trust that ambiguous representation; Node.js itself did not parse multi-value RDNs and was not directly susceptible.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2021-44533
- Published
- Feb 24, 2022
- Updated
- Apr 30, 2025
- Vendor
- Node.js
- Product
- Node.js
- Classifications
- CWE-295
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Feb 24, 2022CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Apr 30, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=10.0 <10.*
- Affected versionversion=11.0 <11.*
- Affected versionversion=12.0 <12.22.9
- Affected versionversion=13.0 <13.*
- Affected versionversion=14.0 <14.18.3
- Affected versionversion=15.0 <15.*
- Affected versionversion=16.0 <16.13.2
- Affected versionversion=17.0 <17.3.1
- Affected versionversion=4.0 <4.*
- Affected versionversion=5.0 <5.*
- Affected versionversion=6.0 <6.*
- Affected versionversion=7.0 <7.*
- Affected versionversion=8.0 <8.*
- Affected versionversion=9.0 <9.*
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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