Buffer overflow in Openssl

CVE-2026-31789

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.

Vulnerability class: Buffer Overflow

EPSS: 0.002 (15.7th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.8 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

  • Openssl — versions 3.6.0, 3.5.0, 3.4.0

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-31789?
CVE-2026-31789 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Openssl, classified under Out-of-bounds Write. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2026-04-07.
How severe is CVE-2026-31789?
Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.