CVE-2026-45271 json
picotls has infinite recursion in the minicrypto ASN.1 decoder
published 2026-08-21 2 mo ago modified 2026-10-12 27 d ago also EUVD-2026-64165
- cvss
- 5.5
- version 3.1, CNA
- cisa kev
- Not listed
- not in CISA's catalog
- epss
- 0.2%
- EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 4%
- public exploits
- 0
- none known
Summary
Picotls is a TLS protocol library that allows users select different crypto backends based on their use case. Picotls implements its own ASN.1 validation helper, which is used by the minicrypto backend while parsing local PKCS#8 private keys. Prior to commit c14231d801407640bc42c2dcf92783409ea6a7c7, the validator recursively descends into constructed ASN.1 elements without enforcing a maximum nesting depth. If an application loads an attacker-supplied private-key file through ptls_minicrypto_load_private_key(), or otherwise calls the public ASN.1 validation API on untrusted DER, a crafted deeply nested ASN.1 structure can exhaust the process stack and crash the application. Note that the libcrypto (OpenSSL) backend does not use the ASN.1 validation helper of picotls, and therefore is immune to this vulnerability. The vulnerability has been addressed in commit c14231d801407640bc42c2dcf92783409ea6a7c7.
Patch / fix
CISA SSVC
- Exploitation
- none
- Automatable
- no
- Technical impact
- partial
- Assessed
- 2 mo ago
Exploit prediction
0.15% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 4% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).
CVSS scores
| assigned by | version | score | vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CNA | 3.1 | 5.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
Affected products
- h2o picotls
Classification
- Weakness
-
- CWE-835 Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition
References
Sources
- CVE List CVE-2026-45271
- NVD CVE-2026-45271
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