A denial of service flaw was found in the way python-backports-ssl_match_hostname,
an implementation that brings the ssl.match_hostname() function from Python 3.2 to
users of earlier versions of Python, performed matching of the certificate's name
in the case it contained many '*' wildcard characters. A remote attacker, able to
obtain valid certificate [*] with its name containing a lot of '*' wildcard characters,
could use this flaw to cause denial of service (excessive CPU time consumption) by
issuing request to validate that certificate for / in an application using the
python-backports-ssl_match_hostname functionality.
Upstream bug report (no patch yet):
[1] http://bugs.python.org/issue17980
References:
[2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=963186
Credit: Issue was found by Florian Weimer of Red Hat Product Security Team