CVE-2026-42790
Improper Certificate Validation: Is CVE-2026-42790 real, exploitable, or a false positive? Here's the community verdict.
signals
public sources
High CVSS base score, but low real-world exploitation probability (EPSS). Likely less urgent than the score implies.
baseline read
auto · not a community verdict
Real, but low real-world risk
A genuine vulnerability on paper, but EPSS shows little real-world exploitation — the base score may overstate urgency. This is not the same as a false positive.
Based on CVSS · FIRST EPSS
Confirm or dispute →CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in Erlang OTP public_key (pubkey_cert and public_key modules) allows a DNS nameConstraints bypass via subject CommonName fallback in TLS hostname verification. Two flaws combine to allow a subordinate CA whose DNS nameConstraints are restricted (e.g. permitted;DNS:allowed.example.com) to issue a leaf certificate that an OTP TLS client accepts as a valid identity for an out-of-scope hostname (e.g. victim.example.com): First, pubkey_cert:validate_names/6 in lib/public_key/src/pubkey_cert.erl only checks SAN DNS entries against nameConstraints. Per RFC 5280, a permitted DNS subtree only restricts certificates that contain a DNS-typed name. A leaf with no subjectAltName therefore trivially satisfies any permitted;DNS:... constraint regardless of its subject commonName. Second, public_key:pkix_verify_hostname/3 in lib/public_key/src/public_key.erl falls back to the subject commonName when no subjectAltName is present, extracting id-at-commonName attributes as presented IDs and matching them against the reference hostname. The strict pkix_verify_hostname_match_fun(https) matcher does not suppress this fallback. The result is that path validation accepts a CN-only leaf under a DNS-constrained intermediate (no SAN means the nameConstraints are not triggered), and hostname verification then accepts it via the CN fallback. The bypass is reachable from stock ssl:connect with verify_peer, a trusted CA, SNI, and the canonical strict https hostname matcher. This issue affects OTP from OTP 19.3 before OTP 29.0.1, OTP 28.5.0.1, OTP 27.3.4.12 and OTP 26.2.5.21, corresponding to public_key from 1.4 before 1.21.1, 1.20.3.1, 1.17.1.3 and 1.15.1.7.
References
Published
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Field notes & remediation
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- 0
This scores high on paper (CVSS 8.1) but the real-world signal is low. It is not in CISA KEV and no public exploit was found, and near-term exploitation looks unlikely (EPSS about 0%). Verify your own exposure before treating it as urgent. It is reachable over the network with no authentication. Not an emergency for most teams, but patch it in your normal cycle and check whether the affected component is actually exposed in your setup.
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