I was very pleased to see that the SSL-related MySQL Bug #62743 was just fixed.

Here is the bug for reference:

http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=62743

In essence, the –ssl-key value was not validated, thus anything could have been specified there.

Your connection would have still been SSL encrypted, which was good at least, but your SSL Key would not have made any difference.

This fix will be included in versions 5.1.66, 5.5.28, 5.6.7, 5.7.0.

For reference, here is the entry that will go into the changelogs:

“The argument to the –ssl-key option was not verified to exist and be
a valid key. The resulting connection used SSL, but the key was not
used.”

If you’re using MySQL and SSL, you might want to glance over this article and give your setup a quick test.

I’ve uncovered an alarming bug in 5.5 where one could gain access to your MySQL instance just knowing the username and password (not having any SSL certificate, key, etc.)!

Of course, I’ve filed a bug about it here:

http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=62743

It’s been over 4 days now, and not one comment from the MySQL Bug/Dev Team.

So once again, I feel the need to share this bug with the public, in case you are using SSL with 5.5, and think your connections are secure, or that only users with the certs/key could gain access.

For SSL Users, you’ll already have this set up, but for those who don’t, I’ve simply got mysqld (5.5.15 and 5.5.16 thus far) running with the following options:

ssl-ca      = …