CVE-2026-28389 PUBLISHED

Possible NULL Dereference When Processing CMS KeyAgreeRecipientInfo

Assigner: openssl
Reserved: 27.02.2026 Published: 07.04.2026 Updated: 07.04.2026

Issue summary: During processing of a crafted CMS EnvelopedData message with KeyAgreeRecipientInfo a NULL pointer dereference can happen.

Impact summary: Applications that process attacker-controlled CMS data may crash before authentication or cryptographic operations occur resulting in Denial of Service.

When a CMS EnvelopedData message that uses KeyAgreeRecipientInfo is processed, the optional parameters field of KeyEncryptionAlgorithmIdentifier is examined without checking for its presence. This results in a NULL pointer dereference if the field is missing.

Applications and services that call CMS_decrypt() on untrusted input (e.g., S/MIME processing or CMS-based protocols) are vulnerable.

The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

Product Status

Vendor OpenSSL
Product OpenSSL
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 3.6.0 to 3.6.2 (excl.)
  • affected from 3.5.0 to 3.5.6 (excl.)
  • affected from 3.4.0 to 3.4.5 (excl.)
  • affected from 3.3.0 to 3.3.7 (excl.)
  • affected from 3.0.0 to 3.0.20 (excl.)
  • affected from 1.1.1 to 1.1.1zg (excl.)
  • affected from 1.0.2 to 1.0.2zp (excl.)

Credits

  • Nathan Sportsman (Praetorian) reporter
  • Daniel Rhea reporter
  • Jaeho Nam (Seoul National University) reporter
  • Muhammad Daffa reporter
  • Zhanpeng Liu (Tencent Xuanwu Lab) reporter
  • Guannan Wang (Tencent Xuanwu Lab) reporter
  • Guancheng Li (Tencent Xuanwu Lab) reporter
  • Joshua Rogers reporter
  • Neil Horman remediation developer

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference CWE