VYPR
Unrated severityNVD Advisory· Published May 13, 2025· Updated May 22, 2025

conda-forge openssl-feedstock writable OPENSSLDIR

CVE-2025-35471

Description

conda-forge openssl-feedstock before 066e83c (2024-05-20), on Microsoft Windows, configures OpenSSL to use an OPENSSLDIR file path that can be written to by non-privilged local users. By writing a specially crafted openssl.cnf file in OPENSSLDIR, a non-privileged local user can execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user or process loading openssl-feedstock DLLs. Miniforge before 24.5.0 is also affected.

AI Insight

LLM-synthesized narrative grounded in this CVE's description and references.

Affected products

4

Patches

Vulnerability mechanics

Root cause

"OpenSSL's OPENSSLDIR was set to a user-writable directory, allowing a local attacker to place a malicious openssl.cnf that loads arbitrary engines."

Attack vector

A non-privileged local user writes a malicious `openssl.cnf` into the `OPENSSLDIR` path that was previously set to the user-writable Conda environment directory (`%LIBRARY_PREFIX%`). When a privileged process or another user loads the OpenSSL DLLs from this Conda environment, OpenSSL reads the attacker-controlled configuration, which can abuse OpenSSL's engine loading feature to execute arbitrary code in the context of the loading process. The attack requires local access and the ability to write files to the Conda environment's directory. [CWE-73] [ref_id=1]

Affected code

The vulnerability is in the `openssl-feedstock` build recipe for Windows. The patch changes the `--openssldir` argument passed to the OpenSSL `perl configure` invocation from `%LIBRARY_PREFIX%` (a user-writable Conda environment directory) to `"%CommonProgramFiles%\ssl"` (a system directory with restricted write permissions). The activation script copying logic (lines 44–52) is also added to provide `SSL_CERT_FILE` via environment variables, replacing the functionality previously expected from `OPENSSLDIR`.

What the fix does

The patch changes `--openssldir` from `%LIBRARY_PREFIX%` (a per-environment, user-writable path) to `"%CommonProgramFiles%\ssl"` (a system-global directory that non-privileged users cannot write to). This prevents a local attacker from placing a malicious `openssl.cnf` file that could load arbitrary OpenSSL engines. The recipe also adds activation scripts to set the `SSL_CERT_FILE` environment variable, ensuring certificate functionality is preserved via environment variables rather than relying on the now-locked-down `OPENSSLDIR` for CA bundles.

Preconditions

  • inputThe attacker must have local access to the Windows machine and be able to write files to the Conda environment's `%LIBRARY_PREFIX%` directory.
  • authThe victim process must load the OpenSSL DLLs from the affected Conda environment.

Generated on Jun 12, 2026. Inputs: CWE entries + fix-commit diffs from this CVE's patches. Citations validated against bundle.

References

2

News mentions

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