Question about thread safety and SSL_CTX* and its SSL*

Thomas Bailleux thomas.bailleux at sandboxquantum.com
Tue Sep 27 16:35:47 UTC 2022


Hello OpenSSL.

I know that thread safety in OpenSSL is a much discussed topic. I have read several GitHub issues[1], Stack Overflow threads[2], and I have read the blog paper[3] too.

However, I am still facing issues when I use `SSL_CTX` and `SSL` objects.

I use `SSL_CTX` and `SSL` inside a threaded application. Threads are managed using pthread primitives.

Basically, I create a `SSL_CTX`, and I fill it depending on the TLS method.
At this point, the `SSL_CTX` is final. I never change it again.

Then, I create n `SSL`s from the `SSL_CTX`, and I spawn n pthreads. Each pthread takes the ownership of a single `SSL`. Finally, each
pthread is going to use its `SSL` object for establishing some TLS connections.
`SSL` objects never get destroyed, instead I use `SSL_clear` for kind of recycling them.

My question is: Is my app thread safe ? I wonder, because I am facing random null deref.
If I create a `SSL_CTX` for each thread, everything is fine.

Best regards,

Thomas B.

[1] https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/2165 <https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/2165>
[2] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40583314/ssl-new-thread-safe-or-not <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40583314/ssl-new-thread-safe-or-not> 
[3] https://www.openssl.org/blog/blog/2017/02/21/threads/ <https://www.openssl.org/blog/blog/2017/02/21/threads/> 

NB: I'am using OpenSSL 1.1.1, from git.
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