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CVE-2026-31789
Heap Buffer Overflow in Hexadecimal Conversion
Description

Issue summary: Converting an excessively large OCTET STRING value to a hexadecimal string leads to a heap buffer overflow on 32 bit platforms. Impact summary: A heap buffer overflow may lead to a crash or possibly an attacker controlled code execution or other undefined behavior. If an attacker can supply a crafted X.509 certificate with an excessively large OCTET STRING value in extensions such as the Subject Key Identifier (SKID) or Authority Key Identifier (AKID) which are being converted to hex, the size of the buffer needed for the result is calculated as multiplication of the input length by 3. On 32 bit platforms, this multiplication may overflow resulting in the allocation of a smaller buffer and a heap buffer overflow. Applications and services that print or log contents of untrusted X.509 certificates are vulnerable to this issue. As the certificates would have to have sizes of over 1 Gigabyte, printing or logging such certificates is a fairly unlikely operation and only 32 bit platforms are affected, this issue was assigned Low severity. The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

INFO

Published Date :

April 7, 2026, 10:16 p.m.

Last Modified :

April 7, 2026, 10:16 p.m.

Remotely Exploit :

No
Affected Products

The following products are affected by CVE-2026-31789 vulnerability. Even if cvefeed.io is aware of the exact versions of the products that are affected, the information is not represented in the table below.

ID Vendor Product Action
1 Openssl openssl
Solution
Address heap buffer overflow by updating the affected software.
  • Update affected software to a patched version.
  • Avoid logging or printing large X.509 certificates.
  • Use 64-bit platforms where possible.
CWE - Common Weakness Enumeration

While CVE identifies specific instances of vulnerabilities, CWE categorizes the common flaws or weaknesses that can lead to vulnerabilities. CVE-2026-31789 is associated with the following CWEs:

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC) stores attack patterns, which are descriptions of the common attributes and approaches employed by adversaries to exploit the CVE-2026-31789 weaknesses.

We scan GitHub repositories to detect new proof-of-concept exploits. Following list is a collection of public exploits and proof-of-concepts, which have been published on GitHub (sorted by the most recently updated).

Results are limited to the first 15 repositories due to potential performance issues.

The following list is the news that have been mention CVE-2026-31789 vulnerability anywhere in the article.

The following table lists the changes that have been made to the CVE-2026-31789 vulnerability over time.

Vulnerability history details can be useful for understanding the evolution of a vulnerability, and for identifying the most recent changes that may impact the vulnerability's severity, exploitability, or other characteristics.

  • New CVE Received by [email protected]

    Apr. 07, 2026

    Action Type Old Value New Value
    Added Description Issue summary: Converting an excessively large OCTET STRING value to a hexadecimal string leads to a heap buffer overflow on 32 bit platforms. Impact summary: A heap buffer overflow may lead to a crash or possibly an attacker controlled code execution or other undefined behavior. If an attacker can supply a crafted X.509 certificate with an excessively large OCTET STRING value in extensions such as the Subject Key Identifier (SKID) or Authority Key Identifier (AKID) which are being converted to hex, the size of the buffer needed for the result is calculated as multiplication of the input length by 3. On 32 bit platforms, this multiplication may overflow resulting in the allocation of a smaller buffer and a heap buffer overflow. Applications and services that print or log contents of untrusted X.509 certificates are vulnerable to this issue. As the certificates would have to have sizes of over 1 Gigabyte, printing or logging such certificates is a fairly unlikely operation and only 32 bit platforms are affected, this issue was assigned Low severity. The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
    Added CWE CWE-787
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/364f095b80601db632b0def6a33316967f863bde
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/7a9087efd769f362ad9c0e30c7baaa6bbfa65ecf
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/945b935ac66cc7f1a41f1b849c7c25adb5351f49
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/a24216018e1ede8ff01a4ff5afff7dfbd443e2f9
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/a91e537d16d74050dbde50bb0dfb1fe9930f0521
    Added Reference https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260407.txt
EPSS is a daily estimate of the probability of exploitation activity being observed over the next 30 days. Following chart shows the EPSS score history of the vulnerability.