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Fencer Vulns
high 7.5

CVE-2026-42765 json

NULL Dereference in Certificate Verification with OCSP Checking

published 2026-06-09 5 mo ago modified 2026-07-23 3 mo ago also EUVD-2026-35482

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 43%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Issue summary: When a partial-chain certificate verification is enabled together with OCSP response checking for the whole chain, a NULL dereference will happen if the verified chain does not have a self-signed trusted anchor, crashing the process.

Impact summary: A NULL pointer dereference can trigger a crash which leads to a Denial of Service for an application.

When performing OCSP response checking for certificates in the verification chain, the code always tries to access the next certificate as the issuer. There is a check for a self-signed certificate. However with the partial chain verification enabled when the chain does not have a self-signed trusted anchor, the issuer will be NULL for the last certificate in the chain. A NULL pointer dereference then happens.

This issue affects only applications which enable both OCSP verification of the certificate chain (X509_V_FLAG_OCSP_RESP_CHECK_ALL) and partial chain verification (X509_V_FLAG_PARTIAL_CHAIN) in the certificate verification. Both flags are disabled by default. For that reason, we have assigned Low severity to the issue.

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

Patch / fix

  • OpenSSL OpenSSL 3.6.3, 4.0.1
  • openssl Debian 14 3.6.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-42765

  • bootupd hummingbird 1 0.3.2-1.hum1
  • rust-bootupd hummingbird 1 0.3.2-1.hum1
  • ruby3.4 hummingbird 1 3.4.10-31.7.hum1
  • ruby3.4-libs hummingbird 1 3.4.10-31.7.hum1
  • ruby3.4-bundled-gems hummingbird 1 3.4.10-31.7.hum1
  • ruby3.4-default-gems hummingbird 1 3.4.10-31.7.hum1
  • ruby4.0 hummingbird 1 4.0.6-37.3.hum1
  • ruby4.0-libs hummingbird 1 4.0.6-37.3.hum1

red hat advisories RHSA-2026:67551RHSA-2026:62790RHSA-2026:62563RHSA-2026:62562RHSA-2026:55543RHSA-2026:42825

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-2026-42765 updated cvss 5.9

openssl: NULL Dereference in Certificate Verification with OCSP Checking

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 openssl, openssl-perl Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 ovmf, OVMF, AAVMF Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 edk2, shim, openssl, shim-x64, edk2-ovmf, shim-aa64, +9 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 edk2, shim, openssl, shim-x64, edk2-ovmf, shim-aa64, +7 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 edk2, shim, openssl, shim-unsigned-x64, shim-unsigned-aarch64 Red Hat JBoss Core Services jbcs-httpd24-openssl, jbcs-httpd24-openssl-libs, jbcs-httpd24-openssl-perl, jbcs-openssl-win6-x86_64.zip 3.5.5-SP4
    +3 more products
    Red Hat JBoss Web Server 6 jws-optional-native-components-win6-x86_64.zip 6.2.4.ER1 Red Hat JBoss Web Server 7 jws-optional-native-components-win6-x86_64.zip 6.2.4.ER1 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8, openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    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 bootupd 0.3.2-1.hum1, chunkah 0.6.0-3.hum1, openssl 3.5.8-0.1.hum1, openssl3 3.5.8-0.1.hum1, ruby4.0 4.0.6-37.3.hum1, ruby3.3 3.3.10-23.6.hum1, +20 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2026:67551
  • Red Hat Hardened Images rust, unbound, netavark, openshell, rust-podman-sequoia, rubygem3.3-rbs 3.4.0-23.6.hum1, +50 more 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
5 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.51% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 43% 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.