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Issue summary: A specially crafted PKCS#7 or S/MIME...

Critical severity Unreviewed Published Jun 9, 2026 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Aug 24, 2026

Package

No package listed— Suggest a package

Affected versions

Unknown

Patched versions

Unknown

Description

Issue summary: A specially crafted PKCS#7 or S/MIME signed message could
trigger a use-after-free during PKCS#7 signature verification.

Impact summary: A use-after-free may result in process crashes, heap
corruption, or potentially remote code execution.

When processing a PKCS#7 or S/MIME signed message, if the SignedData
digestAlgorithms field is present as an empty ASN.1 SET, OpenSSL may
incorrectly free a caller-owned BIO during PKCS7_verify(). A subsequent
use of the BIO by the calling application results in a use-after-free
condition.

In the common case this occurs when the application later calls
BIO_free() on the BIO originally passed to PKCS7_verify(). Depending
on allocator behavior and application-specific BIO usage patterns, this
may result in a crash or other memory corruption. In some application
contexts this may potentially be exploitable for remote code execution.

Applications that process PKCS#7 or S/MIME signed messages using OpenSSL
PKCS#7 APIs may be affected. Applications using the CMS APIs for this
processing are not affected.

The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, and 3.0 are not affected by this
issue, as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Jun 9, 2026
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jun 9, 2026
Last updated Aug 24, 2026

Severity

Critical

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS score

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

This score estimates the probability of this vulnerability being exploited within the next 30 days. Data provided by FIRST.
(88th percentile)

Weaknesses

Use After Free

The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory belongs to the code that operates on the new pointer. Learn more on MITRE.

Expired Pointer Dereference

The product dereferences a pointer that contains a location for memory that was previously valid, but is no longer valid. Learn more on MITRE.

CVE ID

CVE-2026-45447

GHSA ID

GHSA-f684-cpcq-j565

Source code

No known source code

Dependabot alerts are not supported on this advisory because it does not have a package from a supported ecosystem with an affected and fixed version.

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