Revoked-certificate acceptance via expired responder certificate
Published May 27, 2026 · Updated May 27, 2026
OCSP validation in Erlang/OTP 27 before 27.3.4.12, 28 before 28.5.0.1, and 29 before 29.0.1 accepts forged responses from attackers. pubkey_ocsp:verify_response/5 reaches is_authorized_responder/3 without checking the responder certificate's notBefore or notAfter fields. Exploitation requires an expired CA-designated responder private key and a controlled server or man-in-the-middle position, causing a revoked peer certificate to be trusted.
Summary
What happened
OCSP validation in Erlang/OTP 27 before 27.3.4.12, 28 before 28.5.0.1, and 29 before 29.0.1 accepts forged responses from attackers. pubkey_ocsp:verify_response/5 reaches is_authorized_responder/3 without checking the responder certificate's notBefore or notAfter fields. Exploitation requires an expired CA-designated responder private key and a controlled server or man-in-the-middle position, causing a revoked peer certificate to be trusted.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2026-42791
- Published
- May 27, 2026
- Updated
- May 27, 2026
- Vendor
- Erlang
- Product
- Erlang/OTP
- Classifications
- CWE-672, CWE-295, CAPEC-475, T1557
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- May 27, 2026CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- May 27, 2026Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
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- Affected versionversion=1.16 <* changes=[{"at":"1.17.1.3","status":"unaffected"},{"at":"1.20.3.1","status":"unaffected"},{"at":"1.21.1","status":"unaffected"}]
- Affected versionversion=27.0 <* changes=[{"at":"27.3.4.12","status":"unaffected"},{"at":"28.5.0.1","status":"unaffected"},{"at":"29.0.1","status":"unaffected"}]
- Affected versionversion=2b1a742c651b90f8a7a1fb2ddde73f29915ea376 <* changes=[{"at":"7995f1fdaee3da569bb810358ce0f546471d169b","status":"unaffected"},{"at":"b3870e02405c709a872b01ba6086065620cdfe76","status":"unaffected"}]
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What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
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Attacks
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Technologies
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