Medium severity · published Jan 27, 2026
CVE-2026-22796
ASN1_TYPE Type Confusion in the PKCS7_digest_from_attributes() function
5.3
CVSS
0.6%
EPSS
No
On KEV
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.6% · higher than 48% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
OP
OpenSSL · OpenSSL
3.6.0 before 3.6.1; 3.5.0 before 3.5.5; 3.4.0 before 3.4.4; 3.3.0 before 3.3.6; 3.0.0 before 3.0.19; 1.1.1 before 1.1.1ze; +1 more · source: vendor, NVD
SS
SIMATIC S7-1500 TM MFP - GNU/Linux subsystem · Siemens
0 · source: CISA
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-22796
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-22796
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/2502e7b7d4c0cf4f972a881641fe09edc67aeec4
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/572844beca95068394c916626a6d3a490f831a49
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/7bbca05be55b129651d9df4bdb92becc45002c12
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/eeee3cbd4d682095ed431052f00403004596373e
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/ef2fb66ec571564d64d1c74a12e388a2a54d05d2
Vendor Advisory
https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260127.txt
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