High severity · published Aug 25, 2026
CVE-2026-63072
Heap Buffer Overflow in CMS Key Unwrapping
7.5
CVSS
0.9%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Issue summary: OpenSSL CMS decryption sizes the key-unwrap output buffer based
on querying the unwrapped key size, but the AES-WRAP-PAD unwrap primitive
can write and cleanse more bytes than that query reports, causing an 8-byte
out-of-bounds heap write.
Impact summary: An attacker who supplies a crafted CMS message can trigger a
deterministic 8-byte out-of-bounds heap write when the victim decrypts it
with CMS_decrypt(), corrupting the heap and typically resulting in a Denial
of Service.
CWE: CWE-787: Out-of-bounds Write
Description: The key-wrap OID is potentially attacker-controlled on the wire.
CMS unwrapping allows both id-aesNNN-wrap-pad and id-aesNNN-wrap ciphers.
An attacker can take a legitimate message and change a single OID byte to
select the padded variant while leaving the message otherwise valid. Since
the unwrap key is derived from the recipient's private operation (ECDH key
agreement or ML-KEM decapsulation), the RFC 5649 integrity check cannot
pass, and the decryption fails with integrity failure.
The write is a fixed-size (8-byte), fixed-value (zero) heap overflow
immediately past the allocation, requires no special configuration, and is
reachable from the public CMS_decrypt() function. The consequence is
a heap corruption leading to a Denial of Service. The fix in the CMS code
sizes the unwrap output buffer for the worst case so a failed unwrap cannot
write past the allocation.
FIPS impact: no
As the CMS code lives outside the FIPS module boundary, no FIPS
modules are affected by this CVE.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.9% · higher than 60% 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 4.0.2; 3.6.0 before 3.6.4; 3.5.0 before 3.5.8; 3.4.0 before 3.4.7; 3.0.0 before 3.0.22; 1.1.1 before 1.1.1zi · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-63072
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-63072
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/2a3dac874c8057c1f0186849bf1ede1ae7b6b756
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/87784ad619af36b8807c2044b3940006fccc1e42
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/9530a5fd1aacaeccdced4478ea2340a480613335
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/9ec2f6d2ae2bcad907cf7ee38584855bafe4979a
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/a0c8ec557d9cac078f032d76cdf684fe743eb382
Vendor Advisory
https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260825.txt
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