A dirty workaround for this issue is to remove the libssl-dev dependency from scripts/package/mkdebian as below:
diff --git a/scripts/package/mkdebian b/scripts/package/mkdebian
index d046ddc444bd..408bae9def12 100755
--- a/scripts/package/mkdebian
+++ b/scripts/package/mkdebian
@@ -138,7 +138,7 @@ Source: $sourcename
Section: kernel
Priority: optional
Maintainer: $maintainer
-Build-Depends: bc, kmod, cpio, libssl-dev
+Build-Depends: bc, kmod, cpio
Homepage: http://www.kernel.org/
Package: $packagename
