CVE-2026-119189 Forge: X.509 pathLenConstraint not enforced by verifyCertificateChain() for CA certificates without keyUsage
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2026-119189?
CVE-2026-119189 is a medium-severity vulnerability in digitalbazaar forge, published on 29 Oct 2026.
Official description
Forge (also called node-forge) is a native implementation of Transport Layer Security in JavaScript. Prior to 1.4.1, node-forge enforced an X.509 CA certificate's basicConstraints.pathLenConstraint only when that certificate also carried a keyUsage extension. Exploitation requires a path-length-constrained CA without keyUsage that chains to a root trusted by the application, and an attacker who holds that CA's private key or obtains a subordinate CA certificate from it. The attacker could then construct a chain exceeding the declared path length that still passed pki.verifyCertificateChain(). Public web PKI CA certificates normally include keyUsage; private PKIs with CA certificates created without it are more likely to be affected. This issue is fixed in version 1.4.1.
Weakness: CWE-295
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-119189?
How do I fix CVE-2026-119189?
No fix has been published for CVE-2026-119189 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Is CVE-2026-119189 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-119189 in the wild and no public exploit code.