Low severity · published Jun 9, 2026
CVE-2026-42768
Multi-RecipientInfo Bleichenbacher Oracle in CMS_decrypt() and PKCS7_decrypt()
3.7
CVSS
0.8%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Issue summary: The CMS_decrypt and PKCS7_decrypt functions are vulnerable to
Bleichenbacher-style attack when an attacker is able to provide the CMS or
S/MIME messages and observe the error code and/or decryption output.
Impact summary: The Bleichenbacher-style attack allows an attacker to use the
victim's vulnerable application as a way to decrypt or sign messages with the
victim's private RSA key.
The attack is possible in 2 variants.
1. The decryption API (CMS_decrypt(), PKCS7_decrypt()) is used without
providing the recipient certificate. In this case OpenSSL iterates over every
KeyTransRecipientInfo (KTRI) without stopping at the first success.
An attacker who authors a message with two KTRI entries — the first one
wrapping a real CEK under the victim's public key, the second with an
arbitrary probe ciphertext — obtains opportunity to iterate the 2nd KTRI to
get a valid PKCS#1 v1.5 padding if the error code of the application is
available.
That is a Bleichenbacher oracle (Bleichenbacher, CRYPTO '98): an
adaptive-chosen-ciphertext side channel from which the attacker decrypts any
RSA ciphertext to the victim's key or forges any PKCS#1 v1.5 signature under
it.
2. When the decryption API (CMS_decrypt(), PKCS7_decrypt()) is provided with
the recipient certificate, and the recipient is not found, a random
key is substituted.
An attacker who authors a message and is able to compare both error code and
the result of the decryption, can mount a Bleichenbacher oracle.
We are not aware of any applications that provide a remote attacker
an opportunity to mount an attack described in these scenarios. We consider
the existence of such application very unlikely, and for this reason this
CVE has been evaluated as Low severity.
To avoid these attacks, when RSA PKCS#1 v1.5 Key Transport is in use, the
invoked EVP_PKEY_decrypt() will use the implicit rejection mechanism described
in draft-irtf-cfrg-rsa-guidance. In previous OpenSSL releases the implicit
rejection was explicitly disabled.
The implicit rejection mechanism always returns a plaintext value,
the symmetric key. This result is deterministic for the ciphertext and the
private key. The length of the decryption result can happen to match the
length of the key of the symmetric cipher that was used for the content
encryption. When a certificate is not provided, the last RecipientInfo
producing a key that looks valid will be used. It may cause getting garbage
content on decryption. As a proper way to deal with this a recipient
certificate has to be provided to identify the particular RecipientInfo for
decryption.
The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, and 3.4 are not affected by this issue, as
CMS and S/MIME processing happens outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
None
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.8% · higher than 56% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
OP
OpenSSL · OpenSSL
4.0.0 before 4.0.1; 3.6.0 before 3.6.3; 3.5.0 before 3.5.7; 3.4.0 before 3.4.6 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-42768
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-42768
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/a2ca7b2d73e0ffc1eae183fe6e1741dac767cb4f
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/bbb151a83041705d9d001ed2f9c12f5523e1b54d
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/dd68364107a58841c0a2546812518b65d3a23abd
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/f04b377be3d821741c86d1f4bf84dee09f3d5c3e
Vendor Advisory
https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260609.txt
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