How the Critical OpenSSL Vulnerability may affect Popular Container Images

A critical OpenSSL vulnerability is set to be announced on November 1, 2022, affecting only the 3.0.x versions, which poses potential concerns for container images and applications using this version. Historical comparisons are drawn with past vulnerabilities like Heartbleed and CVE-2016-6309, highlighting the rarity and potential impact of such issues. While common Linux distributions and container base images such as RHEL, Alpine, and Debian typically do not have OpenSSL installed by default, application images are more likely to include various versions of OpenSSL, indicating a risk of version drift. The importance of following proper vulnerability management processes is emphasized, with a promise of further details once the CVE specifics are released.