CVE-2026-42769 Details
Issue Summary: An error in the callback used to verify the certificate
provided in a Root CA key update Certificate Management Protocol (CMP)
message response rendered the certificate validation ineffectual, which
could lead to escalation of credentials from the Registration Authority (RA)
level to the root Certification Authority (root CA) level.

Impact Summary: The Registration Autority could replace the root CA
certificate for the CMP clients with an arbitrary root CA certificate.

One of the parts of the Certificate Management Protocol (CMP), specified in
RFC 9810, is Root Certification Authority (root CA) key Rollover,
which is sent by the server in a message with type 'id-it-rootCaKeyUpdate'.
As part of these messages, 'newWithOld' certificate, the new root CA
certificate signed with the old root CA key, is provided, and verifying its
signature is crucial for transferring the trust from the old CA key to the
new one.

The 'id-it-rootCaKeyUpdate' messages are expected to be processed with
OSSL_CMP_get1_rootCaKeyUpdate(), that is expected to verify the 'newWithOld'
certificate. A typo in the certificate chain building code led to adding
an incorrect certificate ('newWithOld' instead of 'oldRoot') to the
certificate chain, rendering the certificate verification process ineffectual
(only the issuer name and the algorithm OIDs were verified by other parts
of the verification code).

An attacker who already has credentials that satisfy the CMP message
protection checks can generate a new key pair and use a crafted self-signed
certificate in its 'id-it-rootCaKeyUpdate' CMP messages which affected CMP
clients would accept as a new trust anchor.

Significant preconditions for the attack (having valid RA-level credentials)
are the reason the issue was assigned Low severity.

The FIPS modules are not affected by this issue, as the affected code is
outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
View at NVD
Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2026-42769
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System): EPSS predicts the likelihood that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild. A higher percentage means a greater chance of an exploit occurring. The EPSS model produces a probability score between 0 and 1 (0 and 100%).
0.26 Probability of exploitation activity being observed over the next 30 days (18th percentile)
CVSS score for CVE-2026-42769
CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System): An open framework owned and managed by FIRST.Org, Inc. that assigns a numerical score from 0 to 10 to software vulnerabilities to indicate their severity.
5.3 Medium
Products affected by CVE-2026-42769

CVE-2026-42769 Global Footprint

Top 10 Identified Countries

Country Observations Percentage
US 16,637 34.75%
JP 4,368 9.12%
DE 3,914 8.17%
GB 2,241 4.68%
IE 2,150 4.49%
IN 2,047 4.28%
CA 1,476 3.08%
FR 1,446 3.02%
NL 1,109 2.32%
KR 839 1.75%

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CVE-2026-42769 Industry Footprint

Top 10 Identified Industries

*Service provider organizations (typically Technology and Telecommunications) are disproportionally represented in the results given their upstream ownership of end-user infrastructure. See our FAQs.

Industry* Observations Percentage
Technology 30,082 79.19%
Telecommunications 3,920 10.32%
Education 2,386 6.28%
Government/Politics 488 1.28%
Business Services 173 0.46%
Manufacturing 126 0.33%
Finance 114 0.30%
Healthcare/Wellness 105 0.28%
Utilities 84 0.22%
Energy/Resources 63 0.17%

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