A stack buffer overflow may lead to a crash, causing Denial of Service, or potentially remote code execution.
When parsing CMS AuthEnvelopedData structures that use AEAD ciphers such as AES-GCM, the IV (Initialization Vector) encoded in the ASN.1 parameters is copied into a fixed-size stack buffer without verifying that its length fits the destination. An attacker can supply a crafted CMS message with an oversized IV, causing a stack-based out-of-bounds write before any authentication or tag verification occurs.
Applications and services that parse untrusted CMS or PKCS#7 content using AEAD ciphers (e.g., S/MIME AuthEnvelopedData with AES-GCM) are vulnerable. Because the overflow occurs prior to authentication, no valid key material is required to trigger it. While exploitability to remote code execution depends on platform and toolchain mitigations, the stack-based write primitive represents a severe risk.
The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as the CMS implementation is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
OpenSSL 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are vulnerable to this issue.
OpenSSL 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 are not affected by this issue.
OpenSSL 3.6 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.6.1.
OpenSSL 3.5 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.5.5.
OpenSSL 3.4 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.4.4.
OpenSSL 3.3 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.3.6.
OpenSSL 3.0 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.0.19.
Heap Buffer Overflow in Hexadecimal Conversion
A flaw was found in OpenSSL. The crehash script does not properly sanitize shell meta-characters to prevent command injection. Some operating systems distribute this script in a manner where it is automatically executed. This flaw allows an attacker to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the script on these operating systems.
A flaw was found in OpenSSL. The issue in CVE-2022-1292 did not find other places in the crehash script where it possibly passed the file names of certificates being hashed to a command executed through the shell. Some operating systems distribute this script in a manner where it is automatically executed. On these operating systems, this flaw allows an attacker to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the script.
A buffer overrun can be triggered in X.509 certificate verification, specifically in name constraint checking. Note that this occurs after certificate chain signature verification and requires either a CA to have signed the malicious certificate or for the application to continue certificate verification despite failure to construct a path to a trusted issuer. An attacker can craft a malicious email address to overflow four attacker-controlled bytes on the stack. This buffer overflow could result in a crash (causing a denial of service) or potentially remote code execution.
Many platforms implement stack overflow protections which would mitigate against the risk of remote code execution. The risk may be further mitigated based on stack layout for any given platform/compiler.
Pre-announcements of CVE-2022-3602 described this issue as CRITICAL. Further analysis based on some of the mitigating factors described above have led this to be downgraded to HIGH. Users are still encouraged to upgrade to a new version as soon as possible.
In a TLS client, this can be triggered by connecting to a malicious server. In a TLS server, this can be triggered if the server requests client authentication and a malicious client connects.
CMS AuthEnvelopedData Processing May Accept Forged Messages
Issue summary: ChaCha20-Poly1305 and AES-OCB decryption with an empty ciphertext can report success without verifying the supplied authentication tag when the operation is finalized by calling the EVPCipher() function.
A flaw was found in Open SSL. A read buffer overrun can be triggered in X.509 certificate verification, specifically in name constraint checking. Note that this occurs after certificate chain signature verification, and requires either a CA to have signed the malicious certificate or for the application to continue certificate verification despite failure to construct a path to a trusted issuer.
Heap Use-After-Free in OpenSSL PKCS7verify()
Heap Use-After-Free in OpenSSL PKCS7verify() (CVE-2026-45447) Severity: High
Issue summary: A specially crafted PKCS#7 or S/MIME signed message could trigger a use-after-free during PKCS#7 signature verification.
Impact summary: A use-after-free may result in process crashes, heap corruption, or potentially remote code execution.
When processing a PKCS#7 or S/MIME signed message, if the SignedData digestAlgorithms field is present as an empty ASN.1 SET, OpenSSL may incorrectly free a caller-owned BIO during PKCS7verify(). A subsequent use of the BIO by the calling application results in a use-after-free condition.
In the common case this occurs when the application later calls BIOfree() on the BIO originally passed to PKCS7verify(). Depending on allocator behavior and application-specific BIO usage patterns, this may result in a crash or other memory corruption. In some application contexts this may potentially be exploitable for remote code execution.
Applications that process PKCS#7 or S/MIME signed messages using OpenSSL PKCS#7 APIs may be affected. Applications using the CMS APIs for this processing are not affected.
The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
OpenSSL 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.0, 1.1.1, and 1.0.2 are vulnerable to this issue.
OpenSSL 4.0 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 4.0.1 OpenSSL 3.6 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.6.3. OpenSSL 3.5 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.5.7. OpenSSL 3.4 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.4.6. OpenSSL 3.0 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.0.21. OpenSSL 1.1.1 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 1.1.1zh (premium support customers only). OpenSSL 1.0.2 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 1.0.2zq (premium support customers only).
This issue was reported by Thai Duong (Calif.io in collaboration with Claude and Anthropic Research). on 27th April 2026. The fix was developed by Igor Ustinov.
DTLS Retransmits Handshake Messages From a Stale Buffer Offset
Issue summary: An uncommon configuration of clients performing DANE TLSA-based server authentication, when paired with uncommon server DANE TLSA records, may result in a use-after-free and/or double-free on the client side.
Impact summary: A use after free can have a range of potential consequences such as the corruption of valid data, crashes or execution of arbitrary code.
However, the issue only affects clients that make use of TLSA records with both the PKIX-TA(0/PKIX-EE(1) certificate usages and the DANE-TA(2) certificate usage.
By far the most common deployment of DANE is in SMTP MTAs for which RFC7672 recommends that clients treat as 'unusable' any TLSA records that have the PKIX certificate usages. These SMTP (or other similar) clients are not vulnerable to this issue. Conversely, any clients that support only the PKIX usages, and ignore the DANE-TA(2) usage are also not vulnerable.
The client would also need to be communicating with a server that publishes a TLSA RRset with both types of TLSA records.
No FIPS modules are affected by this issue, the problem code is outside the FIPS module boundary.
Issue summary: A signed integer overflow when sizing the destination buffer for Unicode output in ASN1mbstringncopy() can lead to a heap buffer overflow.
Issue summary: The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication code) implementation contains a bug that might corrupt the internal state of applications on the Windows 64 platform when running on newer X8664 processors supporting the AVX512-IFMA instructions.
Impact summary: If in an application that uses the OpenSSL library an attacker can influence whether the POLY1305 MAC algorithm is used, the application state might be corrupted with various application dependent consequences.
The POLY1305 MAC (message authentication code) implementation in OpenSSL does not save the contents of non-volatile XMM registers on Windows 64 platform when calculating the MAC of data larger than 64 bytes. Before returning to the caller all the XMM registers are set to zero rather than restoring their previous content. The vulnerable code is used only on newer x8664 processors supporting the AVX512-IFMA instructions.
The consequences of this kind of internal application state corruption can be various - from no consequences, if the calling application does not depend on the contents of non-volatile XMM registers at all, to the worst consequences, where the attacker could get complete control of the application process. However given the contents of the registers are just zeroized so the attacker cannot put arbitrary values inside, the most likely consequence, if any, would be an incorrect result of some application dependent calculations or a crash leading to a denial of service.
The POLY1305 MAC algorithm is most frequently used as part of the CHACHA20-POLY1305 AEAD (authenticated encryption with associated data) algorithm. The most common usage of this AEAD cipher is with TLS protocol versions 1.2 and 1.3 and a malicious client can influence whether this AEAD cipher is used by the server. This implies that server applications using OpenSSL can be potentially impacted. However we are currently not aware of any concrete application that would be affected by this issue therefore we consider this a Low severity security issue.
As a workaround the AVX512-IFMA instructions support can be disabled at runtime by setting the environment variable OPENSSLia32cap:
OPENSSLia32cap=:~0x200000
The FIPS provider is not affected by this issue.
Abnormal termination of an application can a cause a denial of service.
Applications performing certificate name checks (e.g., TLS clients checking server certificates) may attempt to read an invalid memory address when comparing the expected name with an otherName subject alternative name of an X.509 certificate. This may result in an exception that terminates the application program.
Note that basic certificate chain validation (signatures, dates, ...) is not affected, the denial of service can occur only when the application also specifies an expected DNS name, Email address or IP address.
TLS servers rarely solicit client certificates, and even when they do, they generally don't perform a name check against a "reference identifier" (expected identity), but rather extract the presented identity after checking the certificate chain. So TLS servers are generally not affected and the severity of the issue is Moderate.
The FIPS modules in 3.3, 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue. OpenSSL 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 are also not affected by this issue.
OpenSSL 3.3, 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0 are vulnerable to this issue.
OpenSSL 3.3 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.3.2
OpenSSL 3.2 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.2.3
OpenSSL 3.1 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.1.7
OpenSSL 3.0 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.0.15
A security vulnerability has been identified in all supported versions
of OpenSSL related to the verification of X.509 certificate chains that include policy constraints. Attackers may be able to exploit this vulnerability by creating a malicious certificate chain that triggers exponential use of computational resources, leading to a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on affected systems.
Policy processing is disabled by default but can be enabled by passing the -policy' argument to the command line utilities or by calling the X509VERIFYPARAMset1policies()' function.
Issue summary: A type confusion vulnerability exists in the TimeStamp Response verification code where an ASN1TYPE union member is accessed without first validating the type, causing an invalid or NULL pointer dereference when processing a malformed TimeStamp Response file.
Impact summary: An application calling TSRESPverifyresponse() with a malformed TimeStamp Response can be caused to dereference an invalid or NULL pointer when reading, resulting in a Denial of Service.
The functions osslessgetsigningcert() and osslessgetsigningcertv2() access the signing cert attribute value without validating its type. When the type is not VASN1SEQUENCE, this results in accessing invalid memory through the ASN1TYPE union, causing a crash.
Exploiting this vulnerability requires an attacker to provide a malformed TimeStamp Response to an application that verifies timestamp responses. The TimeStamp protocol (RFC 3161) is not widely used and the impact of the exploit is just a Denial of Service. For these reasons the issue was assessed as Low severity.
The FIPS modules in 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as the TimeStamp Response implementation is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
OpenSSL 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.0 and 1.1.1 are vulnerable to this issue.
OpenSSL 1.0.2 is not affected by this issue.
Issue summary: Processing a malformed PKCS#12 file can trigger a NULL pointer dereference in the PKCS12itemdecryptd2iex() function.
Impact summary: A NULL pointer dereference can trigger a crash which leads to Denial of Service for an application processing PKCS#12 files.
The PKCS12itemdecryptd2iex() function does not check whether the oct parameter is NULL before dereferencing it. When called from PKCS12unpackp7encdata() with a malformed PKCS#12 file, this parameter can be NULL, causing a crash. The vulnerability is limited to Denial of Service and cannot be escalated to achieve code execution or memory disclosure.
Exploiting this issue requires an attacker to provide a malformed PKCS#12 file to an application that processes it. For that reason the issue was assessed as Low severity according to our Security Policy.
The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as the PKCS#12 implementation is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
OpenSSL 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.0, 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 are vulnerable to this issue.
Issue summary: During processing of a crafted CMS EnvelopedData message with KeyAgreeRecipientInfo a NULL pointer dereference can happen.
Impact summary: Applications that process attacker-controlled CMS data may crash before authentication or cryptographic operations occur resulting in Denial of Service.
When a CMS EnvelopedData message that uses KeyAgreeRecipientInfo is processed, the optional parameters field of KeyEncryptionAlgorithmIdentifier is examined without checking for its presence. This results in a NULL pointer dereference if the field is missing.
Applications and services that call CMSdecrypt() on untrusted input (e.g., S/MIME processing or CMS-based protocols) are vulnerable.
The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
Incorrect Failure Handling in RSA KEM RSASVE Encapsulation
Issue summary: When a delta CRL that contains a Delta CRL Indicator extension is processed a NULL pointer dereference might happen if the required CRL Number extension is missing.
Impact summary: A NULL pointer dereference can trigger a crash which leads to a Denial of Service for an application.
When CRL processing and delta CRL processing is enabled during X.509 certificate verification, the delta CRL processing does not check whether the CRL Number extension is NULL before dereferencing it. When a malformed delta CRL file is being processed, this parameter can be NULL, causing a NULL pointer dereference.
Exploiting this issue requires the X509VFLAGUSEDELTAS flag to be enabled in the verification context, the certificate being verified to contain a freshestCRL extension or the base CRL to have the EXFLAGFRESHEST flag set, and an attacker to provide a malformed CRL to an application that processes it.
The vulnerability is limited to Denial of Service and cannot be escalated to achieve code execution or memory disclosure. For that reason the issue was assessed as Low severity according to our Security Policy.
The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
Issue summary: During processing of a crafted CMS EnvelopedData message with KeyTransportRecipientInfo a NULL pointer dereference can happen.
Impact summary: Applications that process attacker-controlled CMS data may crash before authentication or cryptographic operations occur resulting in Denial of Service.
When a CMS EnvelopedData message that uses KeyTransportRecipientInfo with RSA-OAEP encryption is processed, the optional parameters field of RSA-OAEP SourceFunc algorithm identifier is examined without checking for its presence. This results in a NULL pointer dereference if the field is missing.
Applications and services that call CMSdecrypt() on untrusted input (e.g., S/MIME processing or CMS-based protocols) are vulnerable.
The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
Heap Buffer Over-read in ASN.1 Content Parsing
AES-OCB IV Ignored on EVPCipher() Path
Issue summary: When CMS password-based decryption (RFC 3211 / PWRI key unwrap) processes attacker-supplied CMS data, an attacker-chosen stream-mode KEK cipher can trigger a heap out-of-bounds read in kekunwrapkey().
Heap Buffer Overflow in CMS Key Unwrapping
Invalid Pointer Dereference in CMP Server via Crafted protectionAlg
Excessive Memory Use Buffering DTLS Records for a Future Epoch
A NULL pointer can be dereferenced when signatures are being verified on PKCS7 signed or signedAndEnveloped data. In case the hash algorithm used for the signature is known to the OpenSSL library but the implementation of the hash algorithm is not available the digest initialization will fail. There is a missing check for the return value from the initialization function which later leads to invalid usage of the digest API most likely leading to a crash. The unavailability of an algorithm can be caused by using FIPS enabled configuration of providers or more commonly by not loading the legacy provider.
PKCS7 data is processed by the SMIME library calls and also by the time stamp (TS) library calls. The TLS implementation in OpenSSL does not call these functions however third party applications would be affected if they call these functions to verify signatures on untrusted data.
A flaw was found in OpenSSL. An invalid pointer dereference on read can be triggered when an application tries to load malformed PKCS7 data with the d2iPKCS7(), d2iPKCS7bio() or d2iPKCS7fp() functions. This may result in an application crash which could lead to a denial of service. The TLS implementation in OpenSSL does not call this function, however, third party applications might call these functions on untrusted data.
A flaw was found in OpenSSL. An invalid pointer dereference on read can be triggered when an application tries to check a malformed DSA public key by the EVPPKEYpubliccheck() function, most likely leading to an application crash. This function can be called on public keys supplied from untrusted sources, which could allow an attacker to cause a denial of service.