OpenSSL CMS and Mitigation CVE-2026-63072
CVE-2026-63072 is a High severity (CVSS 7.5) vulnerability in OpenSSL that was publicly disclosed on August 25, 2026. It affects OpenSSL's CMS (Cryptographic Message Syntax) decryption functionality and can lead to a heap corruption and denial of service (DoS) condition.
Summary
- Product: OpenSSL
- CVE: CVE-2026-63072
- Severity: High (CVSS v3.1: 7.5)
- Weakness: CWE-787 (Out-of-Bounds Write)
- Impact: Denial of Service (process crash / heap corruption)
- Attack Vector: Remote, via a crafted CMS message
- Privileges Required: None
- User Interaction: None
Technical
The vulnerability occurs because OpenSSL's CMS decryption code allocates the key-unwrapping buffer based on a reported key size, but the AES-WRAP-PAD unwrap routine can write more data than expected. This results in a deterministic 8-byte out-of-bounds heap write.
An attacker can modify a CMS message to switch the key-wrap algorithm OID from a standard AES wrap variant to an AES-WRAP-PAD variant. When the target application decrypts the malicious CMS object using
CMS_decrypt(), the heap corruption occurs. The primary observed impact is a crash or denial of service.You may be affected if:
- Your application uses OpenSSL CMS functionality.
- It accepts or processes untrusted CMS/PKCS#7 messages.
- It calls the OpenSSL
CMS_decrypt()API.
Mitigation
- Update OpenSSL to a vendor-fixed version immediately. OpenSSL has released fixes that resize the unwrap output buffer to the worst-case size, preventing the overflow.
- Review vendor advisories for operating systems and applications that bundle OpenSSL.
- If immediate patching is not possible, restrict or disable processing of untrusted CMS content where feasible.
For a Windows/Linux Administrator
To determine exposure:
openssl version -aThen compare the installed version against your vendor's security advisory and patched release level. Systems that do not use CMS decryption functionality may have significantly lower practical exposure.
If you'd like, I can also provide:
- affected OpenSSL versions,
- fixed versions by distribution (RHEL, Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, etc.),
- PowerShell or Linux commands to locate vulnerable OpenSSL installations across servers.
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