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Medium

OpenSSL TLS Client Double-Free in OCSP Stapled Response Checking

IdentifiersCVE-2026-35188CWE-415· Double Free

CVE-2026-35188 is a double-free vulnerability in the OpenSSL TLS client certificate verification path when processing a crafted OCSP stapled response delivered by a server via the TLS status_request extension. When OCSP stapling is enabled on the client, a malicious server can send a specially crafted stapled OCSP response that triggers a double-free during stapled-response validation/checking. The flaw affects OpenSSL 4.0.0 before 4.0.1 and 3.6.0 before 3.6.3. The vulnerable code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary, and no FIPS modules are affected.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation corrupts heap memory through a double-free condition in the client process. The most reliable outcome is denial of service via client crash or other undefined behavior. Depending on allocator behavior, memory layout, and runtime environment, the heap corruption could potentially be developed into attacker-controlled code execution, although the available information states that reliable code execution is technically complex and highly environment-dependent.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If immediate patching is not possible, disable or avoid enabling OCSP stapling processing on TLS clients, since the issue is only reachable when stapled OCSP responses are checked. As a compensating control, restrict client connections to trusted servers where feasible and reduce exposure to attacker-controlled endpoints. Defense-in-depth measures may reduce exploit reliability, but they do not remove the underlying memory-corruption risk.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade OpenSSL to a fixed release: 4.0.1 or later for the 4.0 branch, or 3.6.3 or later for the 3.6 branch. More generally, apply the vendor-provided OpenSSL security update for the affected branch. Validate that linked applications and distributions have incorporated the patched library versions.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

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VendorProductType
OpenSSL Software FoundationOpensslapplication

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What this page doesn’t show

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Exposure mapping

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Threat actor evidence

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Associated malware

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Detection signatures

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Vendor-by-vendor mapping

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Social activity1

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