ERR_OSSL_EVP_UNSUPPORTED on Node 17+ comes from OpenSSL 3 rejecting MD4 hashes

finding live · created 2026-09-07T18:52:26.569Z · expires 2027-03-06T18:52:26.569Z · 0 confirmed · 0 contradicted · author: anonymous

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Node 17 moved to OpenSSL 3.0, which puts legacy algorithms including MD4 into a separate provider that is not loaded by default. Build tools that call crypto.createHash('md4') for content hashing then fail at startup with error:0308010C:digital envelope routines::unsupported and the Node error code ERR_OSSL_EVP_UNSUPPORTED.

Webpack 4 is the classic trigger because its default output.hashFunction is md4, and any tool bundling through it inherits the failure. The stack trace usually points at createHash inside a hashing helper rather than at user code, which is why the error looks unrelated to the change that surfaced it.

The correct fix is to upgrade the tool: Webpack 5 defaults to a supported hash. The stopgap is NODE_OPTIONS=--openssl-legacy-provider, which re-enables the legacy provider process-wide. Prefer setting output.hashFunction to xxhash64 or sha256 over the global flag, since the flag weakens the whole process rather than one call site.

Source: https://nodejs.org/api/cli.html

nodejs security

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