CVE-2026-42791

Publication date 27 May 2026

Last updated 7 August 2026

Ubuntu priority

Medium

Why this priority?

Cvss 3 Severity Score

3.7 · Low

Score breakdown

Description

Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in Erlang OTP public_key (pubkey_ocsp module) allows forged OCSP responses signed with an expired responder certificate to be accepted as valid. OCSP response verification in pubkey_ocsp:verify_response/5 and pubkey_ocsp:is_authorized_responder/3 in lib/public_key/src/pubkey_ocsp.erl does not check the validity period (notBefore/notAfter) of the OCSP responder certificate. An attacker who has obtained the private key of an expired CA-designated OCSP responder certificate can forge OCSP responses that Erlang/OTP accepts as valid. This affects TLS clients using OCSP stapling via the ssl application: a malicious or compromised server can present a revoked TLS certificate together with a forged OCSP response signed by an expired responder key, and the client will accept the revoked certificate as valid. It also affects applications calling public_key:pkix_ocsp_validate/5 directly, where the impact depends on the use case — server-side client certificate validation using this API may allow authentication bypass with a revoked client certificate. This issue affects OTP from OTP 27.0 before OTP 29.0.1, OTP 28.5.0.1 and OTP 27.3.4.12, corresponding to public_key from 1.16 before 1.21.1, 1.20.3.1 and 1.17.1.3.

Status

Package Ubuntu Release Status
erlang 26.04 LTS resolute
Vulnerable
25.10 questing Ignored end of life, was needs-triage
24.04 LTS noble
Not affected
22.04 LTS jammy
Not affected
20.04 LTS focal
Not affected
18.04 LTS bionic
Not affected
16.04 LTS xenial
Not affected
14.04 LTS trusty
Not affected

Severity score breakdown

CVSS version:

Base score 6.3 · Medium

Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N

Base score 3.7 · Low

Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

References

Other references

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