OCSP responder certificate validity period not checked in public_key (Erlang OTP)

CVE-2026-42791
MEDIUM 6.3

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.32 % · percentile 24 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
EEF
NVD status
Modified

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.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-295 — Improper Certificate Validation
  • CWE-672 — Operation on a Resource after Expiration or Release

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 6.3CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:NEEF
CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 6.3CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XNVD · 6b3ad84c-e1a6-4bf7-a703-f496b71e49db (Secondary)
CVSS 3.1LOW 3.7CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:NNVD · nvd@nist.gov (Primary)

European references

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

Affected products

ProductVersions
Erlang · OTPaffected 1.16 < *
Erlang · OTPaffected 27.0 < * ; affected 2b1a742c651b90f8a7a1fb2ddde73f29915ea376 < *

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD