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CVE-2026-42791

Improper Certificate Validation: Is CVE-2026-42791 real, exploitable, or a false positive? Here's the community verdict.

signals

public sources

Exploited in wild
Not listed
CISA KEV
Public exploit
None known
Metasploit/EDB/PoC
Base severity
3.7 Low
CVSS
Exploitation prob.
0.3%
FIRST EPSS
Weakness
CWE-295 · Improper Certificate Validation
CWE

Moderate signals. Triage by your actual exposure and reachability.

baseline read

auto · not a community verdict

Low signal — verdict needed

Few public signals point to active risk. Whether a scanner hit here is a true or false positive depends on your version and config — community verdicts decide.

Based on CVSS · FIRST EPSS

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Affected:Erlang

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in Erlang OTP public_key (pubkey_ocsp module) allows forged OCSP responses signed with an expired responder certificate to be accepted as valid. OCSP response verification in pubkey_ocsp:verify_response/5 and pubkey_ocsp:is_authorized_responder/3 in lib/public_key/src/pubkey_ocsp.erl does not check the validity period (notBefore/notAfter) of the OCSP responder certificate. An attacker who has obtained the private key of an expired CA-designated OCSP responder certificate can forge OCSP responses that Erlang/OTP accepts as valid. This affects TLS clients using OCSP stapling via the ssl application: a malicious or compromised server can present a revoked TLS certificate together with a forged OCSP response signed by an expired responder key, and the client will accept the revoked certificate as valid. It also affects applications calling public_key:pkix_ocsp_validate/5 directly, where the impact depends on the use case — server-side client certificate validation using this API may allow authentication bypass with a revoked client certificate. This issue affects OTP from OTP 27.0 before OTP 29.0.1, OTP 28.5.0.1 and OTP 27.3.4.12, corresponding to public_key from 1.16 before 1.21.1, 1.20.3.1 and 1.17.1.3.

Published

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In your experience, is this finding real and exploitable?

awaiting field verdicts
Real, but not a risk here
Not a real issue

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Field notes & remediation

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  • 0
    Field note · TruePositive EditorialCurated

    No confirmed in-the-wild exploitation or public exploit was found for this yet.

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Same weakness: CWE-295 · Improper Certificate Validation.