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CVE-2026-22796 Detail

Description

Issue summary: A type confusion vulnerability exists in the signature verification of signed PKCS#7 data where an ASN1_TYPE union member is accessed without first validating the type, causing an invalid or NULL pointer dereference when processing malformed PKCS#7 data. Impact summary: An application performing signature verification of PKCS#7 data or calling directly the PKCS7_digest_from_attributes() function can be caused to dereference an invalid or NULL pointer when reading, resulting in a Denial of Service. The function PKCS7_digest_from_attributes() accesses the message digest attribute value without validating its type. When the type is not V_ASN1_OCTET_STRING, this results in accessing invalid memory through the ASN1_TYPE union, causing a crash. Exploiting this vulnerability requires an attacker to provide a malformed signed PKCS#7 to an application that verifies it. The impact of the exploit is just a Denial of Service, the PKCS7 API is legacy and applications should be using the CMS API instead. 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 PKCS#7 parsing 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.


Metrics

NVD enrichment efforts reference publicly available information to associate vector strings. CVSS information contributed by other sources is also displayed.
CVSS 4.0 Severity and Vector Strings:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
N/A
NVD assessment not yet provided.

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

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URL Source(s) Tag(s)
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/2502e7b7d4c0cf4f972a881641fe09edc67aeec4 OpenSSL Software Foundation
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/572844beca95068394c916626a6d3a490f831a49 OpenSSL Software Foundation
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/7bbca05be55b129651d9df4bdb92becc45002c12 OpenSSL Software Foundation
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/eeee3cbd4d682095ed431052f00403004596373e OpenSSL Software Foundation
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/ef2fb66ec571564d64d1c74a12e388a2a54d05d2 OpenSSL Software Foundation
https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260127.txt OpenSSL Software Foundation

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-754 Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions OpenSSL Software Foundation  

Change History

2 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2026-22796
NVD Published Date:
01/27/2026
NVD Last Modified:
01/27/2026
Source:
OpenSSL Software Foundation