Medium severity · published Aug 25, 2026
CVE-2026-63074
CMP Indefinite Cache Growth of ExtraCerts
5.9
CVSS
0.6%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Issue summary: The OpenSSL Certificate Management Protocol (CMP) caches
additional certificates (extraCerts) sent in a CMP message, but never expunges
them (for instance if they are invalid). If a server reuses an OSSL_CMP_CTX
frequently, this cache of extraCerts may grow unboundedly, and a malicious
client may flood a CMP server with requests driving this growth.
Impact summary: Users utilizing a CMP server that reuses a single OSSL_CMP_CTX
for the lifetime of a server process may observe unbounded memory growth in the
event a malicious client repeatedly sends requests containing unique extra
certificates, which may lead to OOM conditions.
CWE: CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling
Description: If a remote user sends CMP messages to a server with a list of
extraCerts and the message is rejected, the extraCerts from the message remains
in the server contexts untrusted certificate stack. This exposes servers with
long lived ctx objects to Denial of Service attacks in which an attacker sends
messages intending to be rejected with a large list of additional certificates
repeatedly, forcing the server to store them indefinitely.
The issue was fixed by removing the added extra certs if the message is
rejected, using the same method as when the context is configured to not do
caching at all.
FIPS impact: no
As the CMP code lives outside the FIPS module boundary, no FIPS
modules are affected by this CVE.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
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
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 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-63074
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-63074
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/01e567978a55fba18142a230380c31296049fae7
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/21a5d9658b0c66daace60e10ea18ff32a448de9f
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/74ae7f6df47a5767c1010b88c47507dfc5b32c46
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/75360af9650d4e0c82ba0050c5c9912cd79e54af
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/f636f9ca0fa1bae5b42f9e787f025c96fb09c43a
Vendor Advisory
https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260825.txt
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