Service interruption via unchecked certificate length
Published Jan 27, 2026 · Updated Jan 27, 2026
Excessive allocation in OpenSSL certificate decompression allows remote attackers to interrupt services via compressed TLS 1.3 certificates. The TLS 1.3 CompressedCertificate handler grows a heap buffer from the peer-supplied uncompressed length before decompression without enforcing max_cert_list. Reachability requires compiled-in certificate compression, an available compression algorithm, and extension negotiation; clients can accept a malicious server certificate, while servers require mutual TLS, and each failed handshake can consume about 22 MiB plus CPU.
Summary
What happened
Excessive allocation in OpenSSL certificate decompression allows remote attackers to interrupt services via compressed TLS 1.3 certificates. The TLS 1.3 CompressedCertificate handler grows a heap buffer from the peer-supplied uncompressed length before decompression without enforcing max_cert_list. Reachability requires compiled-in certificate compression, an available compression algorithm, and extension negotiation; clients can accept a malicious server certificate, while servers require mutual TLS, and each failed handshake can consume about 22 MiB plus CPU.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2025-66199
- Published
- Jan 27, 2026
- Updated
- Jan 27, 2026
- Vendor
- OpenSSL Project
- Product
- OpenSSL
- Classifications
- CWE-789, T1499.004
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Jan 27, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Jan 27, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=3.3.0 <3.3.6
- Affected versionversion=3.4.0 <3.4.4
- Affected versionversion=3.5.0 <3.5.5
- Affected versionversion=3.6.0 <3.6.1
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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