CVE-2026-75805: Null Dereference (CVSS 5.3)

Description

Issue summary: A CMP client that requests certificate revocation on the basis of a PKCS#10 CSR may dereference a NULL pointer and terminate abnormally when processing a crafted revocation response. Impact summary: The NULL pointer dereference happens on a read which leads to a crash and a Denial of Service for the affected client application. CWE: CWE-476: NULL-pointer dereference Description: A CMP client revoking a certificate has to tell the server which certificate to revoke, and may do so by supplying a PKCS#10 CSR instead of the certificate itself or its issuer name and serial number. This is 'openssl cmp -cmd rr -csr <file>' on the command line, or OSSL_CMP_exec_RR_ses() with the certificate supplied via OSSL_CMP_CTX_set1_p10CSR() through the API. A CSR does not contain the issuer name and serial number of the certificate, so the client does not send them. A server may optionally name the certificate it revoked in its response, and the client then compares that name against what it sent. Having sent neither an issuer name nor a serial number, it has nothing to compare against, and a server returning a specially crafted name causes the client to read from a NULL pointer and crash. The revocation response is checked for valid message protection before the affected code is reached, so an attacker must be a malicious or compromised CMP server, or a man-in-the-middle in possession of the secret used for message protection. Clients that identify the certificate to be revoked by a certificate or by issuer and serial number rather than by a PKCS#10 CSR are not affected. FIPS impact: no No FIPS modules are affected by this issue, as the CMP protocol implementation is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

Is your site exposed to CVE-2026-75805?

Run a free security scan — no signup, results in seconds.

CVSS v3.1 Score

5.3

MEDIUM

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

EPSS — Exploit Prediction

0.0022

Probability of exploitation

0.12%

Percentile rank

EPSS estimates the probability that this vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. A higher score means more likely to be exploited.

Weakness Type (CWE)

CWE-476 CWE-476

References

Other References

https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/7588db7fef14209c3caa3a101d11a02006b19166 https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/7ca0ccb5172a577e9b87267d77bfe21e5481a5e7 https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/9eb2a8a9b86136cdb39d6d7d50644dd66941cdc3 https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/abf02872a4b71767ecc72293424420f5b009190f https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260929.txt

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2026-75805? +

Issue summary: A CMP client that requests certificate revocation on the basis of a PKCS#10 CSR may dereference a NULL pointer and terminate abnormally when processing a crafted revocation response. Impact summary: The NULL pointer dereference happens on a read which leads to a crash and a Denial of Service for the affected client application. CWE: CWE-476: NULL-pointer dereference Description: A CMP client revoking a certificate has to tell the server which certificate to revoke, and may do so by supplying a PKCS#10 CSR instead of the certificate itself or its issuer name and serial number. This is 'openssl cmp -cmd rr -csr <file>' on the command line, or OSSL_CMP_exec_RR_ses() with the certificate supplied via OSSL_CMP_CTX_set1_p10CSR() through the API. A CSR does not contain the issuer name and serial number of the certificate, so the client does not send them. A server may optionally name the certificate it revoked in its response, and the client then compares that name against what it sent. Having sent neither an issuer name nor a serial number, it has nothing to compare against, and a server returning a specially crafted name causes the client to read from a NULL pointer and crash. The revocation response is checked for valid message protection before the affected code is reached, so an attacker must be a malicious or compromised CMP server, or a man-in-the-middle in possession of the secret used for message protection. Clients that identify the certificate to be revoked by a certificate or by issuer and serial number rather than by a PKCS#10 CSR are not affected. FIPS impact: no No FIPS modules are affected by this issue, as the CMP protocol implementation is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary. It has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.3 (MEDIUM).

How severe is CVE-2026-75805? +

CVE-2026-75805 has a CVSS v3.1 score of 5.3 out of 10, rated MEDIUM. This is a medium-severity vulnerability that should be remediated as part of regular maintenance. The EPSS score is 0.0022, placing it in the 0th percentile for exploitation probability.

How do I check if I'm vulnerable to CVE-2026-75805? +

You can use Secably's free Website Scanner to check your website for known vulnerabilities. For infrastructure scanning, use the Port Scanner to identify exposed services that may be affected. Check the vendor advisories linked above for specific patch and version information.

Related Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-8479

IEC 60870-5-104 used in bidirectional mode in RTU500 is vulnerable for a NULL pointer dereferencing, if a specially crafted sequence …

CVE-2025-24031

PAM-PKCS#11 is a Linux-PAM login module that allows a X.509 certificate based user login. In versions 0.6.12 and prior, the …

CVE-2025-31115

XZ Utils provide a general-purpose data-compression library plus command-line tools. In XZ Utils 5.3.3alpha to 5.8.0, the multithreaded .xz decoder …

CVE-2025-0121

A null pointer dereference vulnerability in the Palo Alto Networks Cortex® XDR agent on Windows devices allows a low-privileged local …

CVE-2023-45925

GNU Midnight Commander 4.8.29-146-g299d9a2fb was discovered to contain a NULL pointer dereference via the function x_error_handler() at tty/x11conn.c. NOTE: this …

CVE-2025-6398

A null pointer dereference vulnerability exists in the IOMap64.sys driver of ASUS AI Suite 3. The vulnerability can be triggered …

CVE-2026-75805