Medium severity · published Jun 9, 2026
CVE-2026-42769
Trust-Anchor Substitution via cert/issuer Typo in CMP rootCaKeyUpdate
5.3
CVSS
0.5%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Issue Summary: An error in the callback used to verify the certificate
provided in a Root CA key update Certificate Management Protocol (CMP)
message response rendered the certificate validation ineffectual, which
could lead to escalation of credentials from the Registration Authority (RA)
level to the root Certification Authority (root CA) level.
Impact Summary: The Registration Autority could replace the root CA
certificate for the CMP clients with an arbitrary root CA certificate.
One of the parts of the Certificate Management Protocol (CMP), specified in
RFC 9810, is Root Certification Authority (root CA) key Rollover,
which is sent by the server in a message with type 'id-it-rootCaKeyUpdate'.
As part of these messages, 'newWithOld' certificate, the new root CA
certificate signed with the old root CA key, is provided, and verifying its
signature is crucial for transferring the trust from the old CA key to the
new one.
The 'id-it-rootCaKeyUpdate' messages are expected to be processed with
OSSL_CMP_get1_rootCaKeyUpdate(), that is expected to verify the 'newWithOld'
certificate. A typo in the certificate chain building code led to adding
an incorrect certificate ('newWithOld' instead of 'oldRoot') to the
certificate chain, rendering the certificate verification process ineffectual
(only the issuer name and the algorithm OIDs were verified by other parts
of the verification code).
An attacker who already has credentials that satisfy the CMP message
protection checks can generate a new key pair and use a crafted self-signed
certificate in its 'id-it-rootCaKeyUpdate' CMP messages which affected CMP
clients would accept as a new trust anchor.
Significant preconditions for the attack (having valid RA-level credentials)
are the reason the issue was assigned Low severity.
The FIPS modules are not affected by this issue, as the affected code is
outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.5% · higher than 45% 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-2026-42769
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-42769
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/54d0989997e5fc26057009a9782c3441ce3842fb
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/777b363b16fcf2153bb3ded39dc3838713667c44
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/d35cd473a271bf3ce7bf3d32af53217fb83ae92c
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/d531f21c0fe99067a66fc0ff1161ef127f9cd70b
Vendor Advisory
https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260609.txt
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