CVE-2026-42766CWE-476

Possible NULL Dereference in Password-Based CMS Decryption

Medium · published June 9, 2026

CVSS v3.1
5.9
EPSS
1%
Percentile
64.2
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

Issue summary: A specially crafted password-encrypted CMS message

can trigger a NULL pointer dereference during CMS decryption.

Impact summary: This NULL pointer dereference leads to an application crash

and a Denial of Service.

The CMS PasswordRecipientInfo.keyDerivationAlgorithm field is defined as

OPTIONAL in the ASN.1 specification and may therefore be absent in specially

crafted inputs. During the password-based CMS decryption the OpenSSL

CMS implementation dereferences this field without first checking whether it

was present.

An attacker who supplies such a CMS message to an application performing

password-based CMS decryption can trigger an application crash, leading to

a Denial of Service.

Applications that process password-encrypted CMS messages may be affected.

The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, and 3.0 are not affected by this

issue, as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
5.9 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.01060 · 64.2th percentile
Weakness
CWE-476 · NULL Pointer Dereference
Published
2026-06-09T16:03Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 09 JUN 16:03Z
    Possible NULL Dereference in Password-Based CMS Decryption
    cvelistv5