0.0
NA
CVE-2026-42768
Multi-RecipientInfo Bleichenbacher Oracle in CMS_decrypt() and PKCS7_decrypt()
Description

Issue summary: The CMS_decrypt and PKCS7_decrypt functions are vulnerable to Bleichenbacher-style attack when an attacker is able to provide the CMS or S/MIME messages and observe the error code and/or decryption output. Impact summary: The Bleichenbacher-style attack allows an attacker to use the victim's vulnerable application as a way to decrypt or sign messages with the victim's private RSA key. The attack is possible in 2 variants. 1. The decryption API (CMS_decrypt(), PKCS7_decrypt()) is used without providing the recipient certificate. In this case OpenSSL iterates over every KeyTransRecipientInfo (KTRI) without stopping at the first success. An attacker who authors a message with two KTRI entries — the first one wrapping a real CEK under the victim's public key, the second with an arbitrary probe ciphertext — obtains opportunity to iterate the 2nd KTRI to get a valid PKCS#1 v1.5 padding if the error code of the application is available. That is a Bleichenbacher oracle (Bleichenbacher, CRYPTO '98): an adaptive-chosen-ciphertext side channel from which the attacker decrypts any RSA ciphertext to the victim's key or forges any PKCS#1 v1.5 signature under it. 2. When the decryption API (CMS_decrypt(), PKCS7_decrypt()) is provided with the recipient certificate, and the recipient is not found, a random key is substituted. An attacker who authors a message and is able to compare both error code and the result of the decryption, can mount a Bleichenbacher oracle. We are not aware of any applications that provide a remote attacker an opportunity to mount an attack described in these scenarios. We consider the existence of such application very unlikely, and for this reason this CVE has been evaluated as Low severity. To avoid these attacks, when RSA PKCS#1 v1.5 Key Transport is in use, the invoked EVP_PKEY_decrypt() will use the implicit rejection mechanism described in draft-irtf-cfrg-rsa-guidance. In previous OpenSSL releases the implicit rejection was explicitly disabled. The implicit rejection mechanism always returns a plaintext value, the symmetric key. This result is deterministic for the ciphertext and the private key. The length of the decryption result can happen to match the length of the key of the symmetric cipher that was used for the content encryption. When a certificate is not provided, the last RecipientInfo producing a key that looks valid will be used. It may cause getting garbage content on decryption. As a proper way to deal with this a recipient certificate has to be provided to identify the particular RecipientInfo for decryption. The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, and 3.4 are not affected by this issue, as CMS and S/MIME processing happens outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

INFO

Published Date :

June 9, 2026, 5:17 p.m.

Last Modified :

June 9, 2026, 7:38 p.m.

Remotely Exploit :

No
Affected Products

The following products are affected by CVE-2026-42768 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.

No affected product recoded yet

Solution
Update OpenSSL to enable implicit rejection mechanism for RSA PKCS#1 v1.5.
  • Update OpenSSL to a version with implicit rejection enabled.
  • Provide recipient certificate when decrypting messages.
  • Ensure CMS and S/MIME processing is outside FIPS module boundary.
CWE - Common Weakness Enumeration

While CVE identifies specific instances of vulnerabilities, CWE categorizes the common flaws or weaknesses that can lead to vulnerabilities. CVE-2026-42768 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-2026-42768 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-2026-42768 vulnerability anywhere in the article.

The following table lists the changes that have been made to the CVE-2026-42768 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]

    Jun. 09, 2026

    Action Type Old Value New Value
    Added Description Issue summary: The CMS_decrypt and PKCS7_decrypt functions are vulnerable to Bleichenbacher-style attack when an attacker is able to provide the CMS or S/MIME messages and observe the error code and/or decryption output. Impact summary: The Bleichenbacher-style attack allows an attacker to use the victim's vulnerable application as a way to decrypt or sign messages with the victim's private RSA key. The attack is possible in 2 variants. 1. The decryption API (CMS_decrypt(), PKCS7_decrypt()) is used without providing the recipient certificate. In this case OpenSSL iterates over every KeyTransRecipientInfo (KTRI) without stopping at the first success. An attacker who authors a message with two KTRI entries — the first one wrapping a real CEK under the victim's public key, the second with an arbitrary probe ciphertext — obtains opportunity to iterate the 2nd KTRI to get a valid PKCS#1 v1.5 padding if the error code of the application is available. That is a Bleichenbacher oracle (Bleichenbacher, CRYPTO '98): an adaptive-chosen-ciphertext side channel from which the attacker decrypts any RSA ciphertext to the victim's key or forges any PKCS#1 v1.5 signature under it. 2. When the decryption API (CMS_decrypt(), PKCS7_decrypt()) is provided with the recipient certificate, and the recipient is not found, a random key is substituted. An attacker who authors a message and is able to compare both error code and the result of the decryption, can mount a Bleichenbacher oracle. We are not aware of any applications that provide a remote attacker an opportunity to mount an attack described in these scenarios. We consider the existence of such application very unlikely, and for this reason this CVE has been evaluated as Low severity. To avoid these attacks, when RSA PKCS#1 v1.5 Key Transport is in use, the invoked EVP_PKEY_decrypt() will use the implicit rejection mechanism described in draft-irtf-cfrg-rsa-guidance. In previous OpenSSL releases the implicit rejection was explicitly disabled. The implicit rejection mechanism always returns a plaintext value, the symmetric key. This result is deterministic for the ciphertext and the private key. The length of the decryption result can happen to match the length of the key of the symmetric cipher that was used for the content encryption. When a certificate is not provided, the last RecipientInfo producing a key that looks valid will be used. It may cause getting garbage content on decryption. As a proper way to deal with this a recipient certificate has to be provided to identify the particular RecipientInfo for decryption. The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, and 3.4 are not affected by this issue, as CMS and S/MIME processing happens outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
    Added CWE CWE-514
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/security/commit/a2ca7b2d73e0ffc1eae183fe6e1741dac767cb4f
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/security/commit/bbb151a83041705d9d001ed2f9c12f5523e1b54d
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/security/commit/dd68364107a58841c0a2546812518b65d3a23abd
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/security/commit/f04b377be3d821741c86d1f4bf84dee09f3d5c3e
    Added Reference https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260609.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.