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Mallory
Medium

NULL Pointer Dereference in OpenSSL CRMF EncryptedValue Decryption

IdentifiersCVE-2026-42767CWE-476· NULL Pointer Dereference

CVE-2026-42767 is a low-severity NULL pointer dereference in OpenSSL’s CMP client handling of CRMF EncryptedValue decryption. An attacker controlling a CMP server, or positioned as a man-in-the-middle, can send a crafted CMP response containing a CRMF CertRepMessage with an EncryptedValue structure in which the symmAlg field includes an algorithm OID but omits the parameters field. When a vulnerable OpenSSL CMP client processes this malformed response, it dereferences a NULL pointer and crashes. The issue affects applications that process untrusted CMP/CRMF messages. The vulnerable code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary, and the FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, and 3.0 are not 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 causes the CMP client application process to crash, resulting in denial of service. Based on the provided information, the impact is limited to availability loss; no evidence is provided that this issue enables code execution, privilege escalation, or information disclosure.

Mitigation

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

Until patches are applied, reduce exposure by preventing CMP client applications from processing untrusted CMP/CRMF messages, and avoid using untrusted CMP servers. Where possible, ensure CMP traffic is authenticated and integrity-protected to reduce man-in-the-middle risk. If CMP functionality is not required, disable or isolate it. No specific code-level workaround is provided in the advisory beyond limiting exposure to attacker-controlled responses.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade OpenSSL to a fixed release provided by upstream or your operating system/vendor distribution. The provided context indicates that fixes for the June 9, 2026 OpenSSL advisory were incorporated into OpenSSL patched branches and downstream distributions, including releases such as OpenSSL 4.0.1, 3.6.3, 3.5.7, 3.4.6, and 3.0.21 where applicable through vendor packaging. Apply the relevant vendor security update for affected systems and rebuild or restart dependent applications as needed.
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

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
FreebsdFreebsdapplication
OpenSSL Software FoundationOpensslapplication

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What this page doesn’t show

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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 activity10

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