6

Since the latest openssl upgrade on my Debian server, my mysql clients are unable to connect and give the following message

SSL connection error: error:14082174:SSL routines:SSL3_CHECK_CERT_AND_ALGORITHM:dh key too small

I guess this is to prevent Logjam attacks.

Thanks to https://weakdh.org/sysadmin.html I know how I can generate stronger Diffie-Hellman parameters. However, I don't find any MySQL configuration option to actually use those.

Does anyone know?

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3

The MySQL 5.7.6 release notes contain the following:

Security Fix: Due to the LogJam issue (https://weakdh.org/), OpenSSL has changed the Diffie-Hellman key length parameters for openssl-1.0.1n and up. OpenSSL has provided a detailed explanation at http://openssl.org/news/secadv_20150611.txt. To adopt this change in MySQL, the key length used in vio/viosslfactories.c for creating Diffie-Hellman keys has been increased from 512 to 2,048 bits. (Bug #77275, Bug #21221862, Bug #18367167, Bug #21307471)

It appears from this that the DH size was hardcoded to 512 bits in MySQL before 5.7.6 (permanent logjam?). As later versions of OpenSSL reject these weak keys upgrading OpenSSL without upgrading MySQL appears to break things.

Improve this answer
3
  • Does that mean that the Debian provided mysql (v5.5.43) is just not working with OpenSSL?
    – Lætitia
    Jul 7, 2015 at 15:48
  • 1
    Answering to myself, apparently yes: bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=788895
    – Lætitia
    Jul 7, 2015 at 15:56
  • 1
    Probably no help to you but RHEL/centos and SUSE seem to have patched versions. The other gotcha here is a patched client can't talk SSL to an unpatched server and vice-versa. This is of course good from a security point of view as it means you're not using weak DH parameters but rather confusing to debug given the less than helpful error message.
    – Robert Kerr
    Jul 7, 2015 at 16:22
3

We were able to fix our connection problems by forcing the use of a non-Diffie-Hellman SSL cipher.

  • With our mysql 5.5.42 Linux client we had success with specifying the --ssl-cipher=AES256-SHA command line option, as specified in this bug report.

  • Our (Java7) MySQL 5.1.35 jdbc client, however, did not like that cipher, but worked when we specified enabledSSLCipherSuites=TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA in our connection string, as recommended here.

YMMV

Improve this answer
1
  • I guess that's a good workaround, thanks. With PHP (mysqli driver), one can also use the AES256-SHA cipher when calling mysqli_ssl_set
    – Lætitia
    Aug 31, 2015 at 19:05

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .