CVE-2026-34182
CriticalCVSS 9.1Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk15th percentile - higher than 15% of all known CVEs
Summary
The vulnerability in OpenSSL involves improper processing of AuthEnvelopedData containers in CMS, where insufficient validation of cipher and tag length fields allows an attacker to replace the cipher with an unauthenticated one (e.g., AES-256-OFB) or reduce the tag length to a single byte. This can lead to key-equivalent functionality for a chosen recipient and bypass of message integrity.
Risk Assessment
The organization is at risk of man-in-the-middle attacks where an attacker can decrypt or modify CMS messages, compromising data confidentiality and integrity. Applications trusting CMS_decrypt() may accept modified content, posing a risk for systems requiring strong authentication.
Recommendation
Immediately update OpenSSL to a patched version (e.g., 3.0.x or 1.1.1 with appropriate fix) and review applications using CMS for reliance on CMS_decrypt() for integrity validation. Until the update, temporarily disable AuthEnvelopedData support or implement additional authentication mechanisms.
Other vulnerabilities in OpenSSL
See all- CVE-2016-8610High
A denial of service flaw was found in OpenSSL 0.9.8, 1.0.1, 1.0.2 through 1.0.2h, and 1.1.0 in the way the TLS/SSL protocol defined processing of ALERT packets during a connection handshake. A remote attacker could use this flaw to make a TLS/SSL server consume an excessive amount of CPU and fail to accept connections from other clients.
- CVE-2017-3731High
CVE-2017-3731 affects SSL/TLS servers and clients running on 32-bit hosts that may crash due to an out-of-bounds read caused by a truncated packet. For OpenSSL 1.1.0, the crash can be triggered using the CHACHA20/POLY1305 cipher, and for OpenSSL 1.0.2 using RC4-MD5.
- CVE-2017-3730High
In OpenSSL 1.1.0 before 1.1.0d, a malicious server can supply bad parameters for a DHE or ECDHE key exchange, leading to the client attempting to dereference a NULL pointer, resulting in a client crash.
- CVE-2016-7054High
In OpenSSL 1.1.0 before 1.1.0c, TLS connections using *-CHACHA20-POLY1305 ciphersuites are susceptible to a DoS attack by corrupting larger payloads. This can result in an OpenSSL crash.
- CVE-2016-7052High
OpenSSL 1.0.2i has a vulnerability that allows remote attackers to cause application crashes by triggering a CRL operation, leading to a NULL pointer dereference.
- CVE-2016-6305High
The ssl3_read_bytes function in OpenSSL 1.1.0 before version 1.1.0a allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) by triggering a zero-length record in an SSL_peek call.
- CVE-2016-6304High
Multiple memory leaks in t1_lib.c in OpenSSL before 1.0.1u, 1.0.2 before 1.0.2i, and 1.1.0 before 1.1.0a allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via large OCSP Status Request extensions.
- CVE-2016-6302High
The tls_decrypt_ticket function in OpenSSL before 1.1.0 does not consider the HMAC size during validation of the ticket length, allowing remote attackers to cause a denial of service via a ticket that is too short.
- CVE-2016-2179High
The DTLS implementation in OpenSSL before 1.1.0 does not properly restrict the lifetime of queue entries associated with unused out-of-order messages. This allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by maintaining many crafted DTLS sessions simultaneously.
- CVE-2016-2176High
The X509_NAME_oneline function in OpenSSL before 1.0.1t and 1.0.2 before 1.0.2h allows remote attackers to obtain sensitive information from process stack memory or cause a denial of service (buffer over-read) via crafted EBCDIC ASN.1 data.
Original NVD description (English source)
Issue Summary: Cryptographic Message Services (CMS) processing fails to perform sufficient input validation on the cipher and tag length fields of AuthEnvelopedData containers, leading to various potential compromises. Impact Summary: Attackers making use of these vulnerabilities may achieve key-equivalent functionality for a given CMS recipient and/or bypass integrity validation for a given message. In one use case, an attacker may send a CMS message containing AuthEnvelopedData with the cipher specified as a non-AEAD cipher. OpenSSL erroneously allows this selection, and attempts to decrypt and validate the message. An on-path attacker who captures one legitimate AES-GCM AuthEnvelopedData addressed to the victim can re-emit it with the recipientInfos set left byte-for-byte intact, so the victim's private key still unwraps the genuine CEK (the content-encryption key), but with the inner OID rewritten to AES-256-OFB (Output Feedback Mode, an unauthenticated keystream mode) and with an attacker-chosen IV and ciphertext. The victim initializes AES-256-OFB under the real CEK, never consults the MAC field, and CMS_decrypt() returns success. If the application under attack responds to the attacker with any indicator showing success or failure of the decryption effort, it is possible for the attacker to use this as an oracle to obtain key equivalent functionality for the CEK used for the chosen recipient of the message. In another use case, an attacker can reduce the tag length of the chosen AEAD cipher for a given AuthEnvelopedData container to be a single byte long, allowing an attacker to brute force CMS decryption, producing an integrity bypass for applications that trust CMS_decrypt() to reject modified content. The FIPS modules are not affected by this issue.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS