opensslencrypt versions before 1.4.9 contain an insecure file permissions vulnerability in the desktop GUI that writes decrypted plaintext with world-readable default permissions. Attackers can read decrypted output files created by the GUI as unprivileged local users on multi-user systems.

opensslencrypt versions before 1.4.9 fail to enforce a time ceiling on key derivation function iteration counts specified in file metadata. Attackers can craft files with extremely high KDF iteration counts to consume CPU resources for unbounded periods before password verification occurs.

opensslencrypt versions before 1.4.9 use under-parameterized PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 with only 100,000 iterations to protect PQC keyfile private keys and 10,000 iterations for dual-encryption file-password verification. Attackers who obtain keyfiles or encrypted files can brute-force wrapping passwords offline using GPU or ASIC acceleration.

opensslencrypt before 1.4.9 fails to sanitize the email field of imported identity documents, allowing attackers to inject ANSI escape sequences that forge the fingerprint verification line displayed to users. Attackers can deliver a crafted identity bundle through normal contact-exchange flows or keyserver responses to manipulate terminal output and display a fraudulent fingerprint, bypassing the out-of-band verification mechanism that protects against key substitution attacks.

Issue summary: QUIC server may double free QRX (QUIC record layer RX) object when channel creation fails for initial packet.

A double free in the OpenSSL-based TLS certificate revocation checking path of the MongoDB C Driver can be reached by a TLS endpoint that the client already trusts. During the handshake, specially formed certificate data can cause the same heap object to be released twice. An unauthenticated party acting as the trusted endpoint may cause the connecting client application to terminate unexpectedly.

OpenSSL Release Announcement

The OpenSSL project team would like to announce the upcoming release of OpenSSL versions 4.0.3, 3.6.5, 3.5.9, and 3.4.8.

We will also be releasing extended support for OpenSSL versions 3.0.23, 1.1.1zj, and 1.0.2zs which will be available to premium support customers.

These releases will be made available on Tuesday, 29 September 2026, between 1300 and 1700 UTC.

These are security-fix releases. The highest severity issue fixed in these releases is High:

https://openssl-library.org/policies/general/security-policy/index.html

Yours

The OpenSSL Project Team

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.

The comparator function used for ordering DTLS packets by sequence numbers did not follow qsort comparator contracts in case of packets with duplicate sequence numbers, which could lead to unstable ordering or undefined behaviour. Return 0 in such cases makes the sorting stable. Additionally, discard packets with same sequence numbers and differing handshake type, so that they don't end up being sorted in the first place.

The openssl crate before 0.10.55 for Rust allows an out-of-bounds read via an empty string to X509VerifyParamRef::sethost.

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.

Due to the design of the name constraint checking algorithm, the processing time of some inputs scale non-linearly with respect to the size of the certificate. This affects programs which validate arbitrary certificate chains.

Last updated 16 September 2026

A flaw was found in libssh builds using the OpenSSL backend for AES-GCM. In the decrypt path in src/libcrypto.c, the return value from EVPDecryptFinal() was checked incorrectly, so authentication tag verification failures were not handled as integrity failures. This could effectively remove integrity protection for affected AES-GCM sessions and allow an in-path attacker to modify plaintext on the wire without detection.

Excessive Memory Use Buffering DTLS Records for a Future Epoch

Issue summary: OpenSSL CMP response validation passed an unexpected response sender distinguished name directly as the format string to ERRraisedata().

Heap Buffer Overflow in CMS Key Unwrapping

CMP Indefinite Cache Growth of ExtraCerts

Invalid Pointer Dereference in CMP Server via Crafted protectionAlg

Issue summary: When OpenSSL processes QUIC traffic from a peer that repeatedly sends ack-eliciting packets while not acknowledging ACK-only responses, the QUIC stack can retain ACK-only packet metadata for the lifetime of the connection.

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.

Issue summary: In a server or client configuration with RFC7250 Raw Public Keys (RPKs) enabled, and only the private key (with no associated certificate) configured locally, a NULL pointer dereference may occur when the remote peer solicits raw public keys and also sends the typically omitted "signaturealgorithmscert" TLS extension.

opensslencrypt versions before 1.4.6 contain a key derivation flaw in sequential XOR composition mode where the last stage cancels out during key generation. When configured with a single KDF and no prior hashing stage, attackers can bypass memory-hard key derivation and perform offline password cracking at SHA-256 speed instead of the configured KDF cost.

opensslencrypt versions before 1.4.0 configure CORS with alloworigins set to wildcard and allowcredentials enabled to true. Attackers can create malicious websites that make authenticated cross-origin requests to the API on behalf of any user who visits them.

FFC-DH Peer Validation Uses Attacker-Supplied q

Client-Side Memory Leak in OCSP Response Checking

Issue summary: When a partial-chain certificate verification is enabled together with OCSP response checking for the whole chain, a NULL dereference will happen if the verified chain does not have a self-signed trusted anchor, crashing the process.

Impact summary: A NULL pointer dereference can trigger a crash which leads to a Denial of Service for an application.

When performing OCSP response checking for certificates in the verification chain, the code always tries to access the next certificate as the issuer. There is a check for a self-signed certificate. However with the partial chain verification enabled when the chain does not have a self-signed trusted anchor, the issuer will be NULL for the last certificate in the chain. A NULL pointer dereference then happens.

This issue affects only applications which enable both OCSP verification of the certificate chain (X509VFLAGOCSPRESPCHECKALL) and partial chain verification (X509VFLAGPARTIALCHAIN) in the certificate verification. Both flags are disabled by default. For that reason, we have assigned Low severity to the issue.

No FIPS modules are affected by this issue as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

Double-free When Checking OCSP Stapled Response

CMS AuthEnvelopedData Processing May Accept Forged Messages

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.