Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in Erlang OTP public_key (pubkey_ocsp module) allows forged OCSP responses signed with an expired responder certificate to be accepted as valid.
OCSP response verification in pubkey_ocsp:verify_response/5 and pubkey_ocsp:is_authorized_responder/3 in lib/public_key/src/pubkey_ocsp.erl does not check the validity period (notBefore/notAfter) of the OCSP responder certificate. An attacker who has obtained the private key of an expired CA-designated OCSP responder certificate can forge OCSP responses that Erlang/OTP accepts as valid.
This affects TLS clients using OCSP stapling via the ssl application: a malicious or compromised server can present a revoked TLS certificate together with a forged OCSP response signed by an expired responder key, and the client will accept the revoked certificate as valid. It also affects applications calling public_key:pkix_ocsp_validate/5 directly, where the impact depends on the use case — server-side client certificate validation using this API may allow authentication bypass with a revoked client certificate.
This issue affects OTP from OTP 27.0 before OTP 29.0.1, OTP 28.5.0.1 and OTP 27.3.4.12, corresponding to public_key from 1.16 before 1.21.1, 1.20.3.1 and 1.17.1.3.
CVSS Details
- CVSS 4.0 Base Score: 6.3 (MEDIUM)
- CVSS 4.0 Vector: (CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X)
- CVSS 3.1 Base Score: 3.7
- CVSS 3.1 Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N)
Covered by Rapid7
| Product | Vendor Advisory | Solution File | Added | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Debian | — | Upgrade erlang | Aug 26, 2026 | Aug 26, 2026 |
| Freebsd | — | Upgrade erlang-runtime28Upgrade erlang-runtime29Upgrade erlang-runtime27 | Jun 15, 2026 | May 28, 2026 |
| Vmware Photon_os | — | Use 'tdnf update' to upgrade all packages to the latest version. | Jun 22, 2026 | May 27, 2026 |
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