Issue Summary: Cryptographic Message Services (CMS) processing fails to perform sufficient input validation on the cipher and tag length fields of AuthEnvelopedData containers, leading to various potential compromises. Impact Summary: Attackers making use of these vulnerabilities may achieve key-equivalent functionality for a given CMS recipient and/or bypass integrity validation for a given message. In one use case, an attacker may send a CMS message containing AuthEnvelopedData with the cipher specified as a non-AEAD cipher. OpenSSL erroneously allows this selection, and attempts to decrypt and validate the message. An on-path attacker who captures one legitimate AES-GCM AuthEnvelopedData addressed to the victim can re-emit it with the recipientInfos set left byte-for-byte intact, so the victim's private key still unwraps the genuine CEK (the content-encryption key), but with the inner OID rewritten to AES-256-OFB (Output Feedback Mode, an unauthenticated keystream mode) and with an attacker-chosen IV and ciphertext. The victim initializes AES-256-OFB under the real CEK, never consults the MAC field, and CMS_decrypt() returns success. If the application under attack responds to the attacker with any indicator showing success or failure of the decryption effort, it is possible for the attacker to use this as an oracle to obtain key equivalent functionality for the CEK used for the chosen recipient of the message. In another use case, an attacker can reduce the tag length of the chosen AEAD cipher for a given AuthEnvelopedData container to be a single byte long, allowing an attacker to brute force CMS decryption, producing an integrity bypass for applications that trust CMS_decrypt() to reject modified content. The FIPS modules are not affected by this issue.
This vulnerability carries a CRITICAL severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 9.1, indicating it can be exploited remotely over the network with relatively low complexity without requiring user interaction and does not require pre-existing privileges . The vulnerability impacts confidentiality (data exposure), integrity (unauthorized modifications), for affected systems. Impacting 1 product from openssl organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.
Reported in 2026, this vulnerability emerged during an era marked by increased sophistication in supply chain attacks, cloud infrastructure vulnerabilities, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) security challenges. Security practices during this period emphasized zero-trust architectures, container security, and API protection.
2026-06-09T17:17:04.857
2026-06-17T10:38:36.970
Analyzed
CVSSv3.1: 9.1 (CRITICAL)
| Type | Vendor | Product | Version/Range | Vulnerable? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Application | openssl | openssl | < 3.0.21 | Yes |
| Application | openssl | openssl | < 3.4.6 | Yes |
| Application | openssl | openssl | < 3.5.7 | Yes |
| Application | openssl | openssl | < 3.6.3 | Yes |
| Application | openssl | openssl | 4.0.0 | Yes |
SecUtils normalizes and enriches National Vulnerability Database (NVD) records by standardizing vendor and product identifiers, aggregating vulnerability metadata from both NVD and MITRE sources, and providing structured context for security teams. For openssl's affected products, we extract Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) classifications, CVSS severity metrics, and reference data to enable rapid vulnerability prioritization and asset correlation. This record contains no exploit code, proof-of-concept instructions, or attack methodologies—only defensive intelligence necessary for patch management, risk assessment, and security operations.