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Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2026-72897 json

Out-of-Bounds Access After SSL_set_SSL_CTX() During a Handshake

published 2026-09-29 40 d ago modified 2026-10-08 32 d ago also EUVD-2026-89008

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 33%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Issue summary: A TLS server that calls SSL_set_SSL_CTX() to switch a connection to a different SSL_CTX part way through a handshake may access memory beyond the end of an internal array if the replacement context knows about more provider signature algorithms than the context the connection was created from. Applications which never call SSL_set_SSL_CTX() are not affected.

Impact summary: A remote peer may be able to cause a small out-of-bounds read, and in some circumstances a fixed-value out-of-bounds write, on the server heap. This may lead to a Denial of Service.

CWE: CWE-787: Out-of-bounds Write

Description: A TLS connection records how many certificate slots it has when it is created, taken from the SSL_CTX that created it: the built-in certificate types plus one slot for each provider TLS-SIGALG entry that context was aware of. That count sizes an internal array of per-slot certificate validity flags.

An application may replace a connection's SSL_CTX part way through the handshake by calling SSL_set_SSL_CTX(), most commonly from a servername callback in order to serve a different virtual host. Doing so did not refresh the recorded count. A provider signature algorithm's slot index is its position in the list of whichever context resolves it, so if the replacement context is aware of more of them than the original, an algorithm offered by the peer can resolve to an index beyond the end of the array. Processing the peer's signature algorithms then reads one four byte word past the end for each such algorithm and, where the word read is zero, writes a fixed value over it. A peer offering many of them can corrupt heap metadata and abort the process.

Only provider signature algorithms which occupy one of the excess slots, and which the server also has configured, have this effect. Codepoints the replacement context does not recognise are discarded without being resolved to a slot, and provider signature algorithms are usable only from TLS 1.3.

The two contexts must therefore be aware of different numbers of provider signature algorithms, which requires separate library contexts, a provider loaded between the two being created, or providers which differ in what they advertise - in 4.0, for example, the default provider advertises SM2 where the FIPS provider does not. A deployment meeting the condition is also unable to negotiate the affected algorithms with legitimate clients, since the same stale count hides the corresponding certificates, so the misconfiguration is likely to be noticed. For that reason, and because the configuration is not the default, this issue has been assessed as Low severity.

FIPS impact: no No FIPS modules are affected by this issue as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

Patch / fix

  • OpenSSL OpenSSL 3.4.8, 3.5.9, 3.6.5, 4.0.3
  • openssl Debian 13 3.5.7-1~deb13u3
  • openssl Debian 14 3.6.5-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-72897

  • openssl Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 3.5.5-1ubuntu3.6

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-72897

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • openssl3 hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl3-libs hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl3-devel-engine hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl-libs hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl-perl hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl-config-fips hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl-devel-engine hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1

red hat advisories RHSA-2026:74166RHSA-2026:74162

  • openssl-3 SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 3.5.0-160000.11.1
  • openssl-3 SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 3.5.0-150700.5.53.2

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:24188-1SUSE-SU-2026:24245-1SUSE-SU-2026:4414-1

  • openssl-3 openSUSE Leap 16.0 3.5.0-160000.11.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:22102-1

  • openssl Alpine 3.21 3.3.7-r2

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2026-72897

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • openssl Azure Linux 3.0 3.3.7-7

azure linux advisories AZL-105588

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-72897 updated cvss 5.9

openssl: openssl: Denial of Service via out-of-bounds write during TLS context switch

  • Red Hat Developer Hub 1 rhdh/rhdh-hub-rhel9
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 openssl, shim-x64, edk2-ovmf, shim-aa64, edk2-tools, edk2-aarch64, +9 more
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 shim 16.1-4.el10, openssl 3.5.8-1.el10_2, edk2 20251114-5.el10_2.2, shim-unsigned-x64 16.1-1.el10, shim-unsigned-aarch64 16.1-2.el10 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8, openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat Satellite 6 puppet-agent, openvox-agent 8.28.1-1.el9sat
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-core-bff-rhel9, rhoai/odh-dashboard-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-maas-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-automl-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-gen-ai-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-mlflow-rhel9, +6 more
    under investigation
  • Red Hat Hardened Images openssl 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, openssl3 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, openssl-libs 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, openssl-perl 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, openssl3-libs 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, openssl-config-fips 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, +3 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:74162
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 openssl, openssl-perl, openssl 3.5.8-1.el10_2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 ovmf, OVMF, shim, AAVMF, mokutil, openssl, +6 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 openssl, shim-x64, edk2-ovmf, shim-aa64, shim-ia32, edk2-aarch64, +13 more Red Hat Hardened Images unbound 1.26.1-1.hum1 Red Hat JBoss Core Services jbcs-httpd24-openssl, jbcs-httpd24-openssl-libs, jbcs-httpd24-openssl-perl Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-mlflow-rhel9, rhoai/odh-kube-rbac-proxy-rhel9, rhoai/odh-maas-controller-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mlflow-operator-rhel9, rhoai/odh-model-controller-rhel9, rhoai/odh-ogx-k8s-operator-rhel9, +14 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
40 d ago

Exploit prediction

0.39% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 33% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CNA 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • OpenSSL OpenSSL

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.