CVE-2026-22796 ASN1_TYPE Type Confusion in the PKCS7_digest_from_attributes() function

Medium 5.3 Published 27 Jan 2026 Updated 15 Oct 2026

An attacker can cause a denial of service in applications verifying PKCS#7 signatures by providing malformed data that triggers a null pointer dereference.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Over the internet
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2026-22796?

CVE-2026-22796 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Openssl Openssl, published on 27 Jan 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Issue summary: A type confusion vulnerability exists in the signature verification of signed PKCS#7 data where an ASN1_TYPE union member is accessed without first validating the type, causing an invalid or NULL pointer dereference when processing malformed PKCS#7 data.

Impact summary: An application performing signature verification of PKCS#7 data or calling directly the PKCS7_digest_from_attributes() function can be caused to dereference an invalid or NULL pointer when reading, resulting in a Denial of Service.

The function PKCS7_digest_from_attributes() accesses the message digest attribute value without validating its type. When the type is not V_ASN1_OCTET_STRING, this results in accessing invalid memory through the ASN1_TYPE union, causing a crash.

Exploiting this vulnerability requires an attacker to provide a malformed signed PKCS#7 to an application that verifies it. The impact of the exploit is just a Denial of Service, the PKCS7 API is legacy and applications should be using the CMS API instead. For these reasons the issue was assessed as Low severity.

The FIPS modules in 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as the PKCS#7 parsing implementation is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

OpenSSL 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.0, 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 are vulnerable to this issue.

Weakness: CWE-754

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-22796?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Openssl Openssl.

How do I fix CVE-2026-22796?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2026-22796 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-22796 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Openssl Openssl vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as ALPINE-CVE-2026-22796, AZL-75299, AZL-75348, AZL-75905, AZL-76110, AZL-76161 and 12 more.