Comment # 4 on bug 1078825 from V��t��zslav ������ek

Here's why the crash occurs:

The problem is that OPENSSL_init_crypto() will fail with the
OPENSSL_INIT_NO_LOAD_CONFIG flag if it was previously called with
OPENSSL_INIT_LOAD_CONFIG and vice versa.

And that's exactly what happened here.

Python in init_ssl() calls OpenSSL_add_all_algorithms() which in openssl 1.1 is
a macro that expands to:
OPENSSL_init_crypto(OPENSSL_INIT_ADD_ALL_CIPHERS | OPENSSL_INIT_ADD_ALL_DIGESTS
| OPENSSL_INIT_LOAD_CONFIG, NULL);

Later, through various imports, salt-call in rsax931.py's _init_libcrypto()
calls
OPENSSL_init_crypto(OPENSSL_INIT_NO_LOAD_CONFIG | 
                    OPENSSL_INIT_ADD_ALL_CIPHERS | 
                    OPENSSL_INIT_ADD_ALL_DIGESTS, NULL)

This latter call fails and results in the backtrace from comment 0.
I'll do some more investigation next week.