diff --git a/src/libstrongswan/utils/backtrace.c b/src/libstrongswan/utils/backtrace.c
index 2fdfab1ee0..f2631f3945 100644
--- a/src/libstrongswan/utils/backtrace.c
+++ b/src/libstrongswan/utils/backtrace.c
@@ -242,6 +242,15 @@ static bool bfd_equals(char *a, char *b)
 	return streq(a, b);
 }
 
+/**
+ * Do not print internal errors by libbfd as we get quite a lot of
+ * "DWARF error: could not find variable specification" messages when running
+ * against Ubuntu 20.04's libcrypto (same with addr2line and still in 22.10).
+ */
+void suppress_bfd_errors (const char *fmt, va_list args)
+{
+}
+
 /**
  * See header.
  */
@@ -251,6 +260,7 @@ void backtrace_init()
 	bfds = hashtable_create((hashtable_hash_t)bfd_hash,
 							(hashtable_equals_t)bfd_equals, 8);
 	bfd_mutex = mutex_create(MUTEX_TYPE_DEFAULT);
+	bfd_set_error_handler(suppress_bfd_errors);
 }
 
 /**