NULL pointer dereference in Linuxfoundation Rekor

CVE-2026-23831

Rekor is a software supply chain transparency log. In versions 1.4.3 and below, the entry implementation can panic on attacker-controlled input when canonicalizing a proposed entry with an empty spec.message, causing nil Pointer Dereference. Function validate() returns nil (success) when message is empty, leaving sign1Msg uninitialized, and Canonicalize() later dereferences v.sign1Msg.Payload. A malformed proposed entry of the cose/v0.0.1 type can cause a panic on a thread within the Rekor process. The thread is recovered so the client receives a 500 error message and service still continues, so the availability impact of this is minimal. This issue has been fixed in version 1.5.0.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.3 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.004 (35.4th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 35th percentile — 35.4% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-23831: held from 0.004 to 0.004.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.004 · newest: 0.004 · change: +0.000

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-23831?
CVE-2026-23831 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linuxfoundation Rekor, classified under NULL Pointer Dereference. CVSS score: 5.3/10. Published 2026-01-22.
How severe is CVE-2026-23831?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.3 out of 10.