NULL Dereference in Certificate Verification with OCSP Checking

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Summary

CVECVE-2026-42765
StatePUBLISHED
Assigneropenssl
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-06-09 17:17:07 UTC
Updated2026-06-09 21:17:17 UTC
DescriptionIssue 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 (X509_V_FLAG_OCSP_RESP_CHECK_ALL) and partial chain verification (X509_V_FLAG_PARTIAL_CHAIN) 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.

Risk And Classification

Primary CVSS: v3.1 7.5 HIGH from ADP

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

Problem Types: CWE-476 | CWE-476 CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference

VersionSourceTypeScoreSeverityVector
3.1ADPDECLARED7.5HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
3.1134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0Secondary7.5HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CVSS v3.1 Breakdown

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

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

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA OpenSSL OpenSSL affected 4.0.0 4.0.1 semver Not specified
CNA OpenSSL OpenSSL affected 3.6.0 3.6.3 semver Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
github.com/openssl/security/commit/14340b7fa1d444615486bc137014b064e64ec334 [email protected] github.com
github.com/openssl/security/commit/eb345da18ce2216b2f3ade9c2bc23e068487fa97 [email protected] github.com
openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260609.txt [email protected] openssl-library.org
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis

Vendor Comments And Credit

Discovery Credit

CNA: Joshua Rogers (Aisle Research) (en)

CNA: Joshua Rogers (Aisle Research) (en)

CNA: Daniel Kubec (en)

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