CVE-2026-12996

Severity: high (CVSS 8.1 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-07-30 · updated 2026-08-05
Weakness: CWE-125

Description

A use-after-free in OpenVPN 2.6.0 through 2.6.20 and 2.7_alpha1 through 2.7.4 allows remote authenticated peers to potentially cause a denial of service or leak memory via crafted packets during TLS session promotion or expiry

Affected products

Debian Linux: 11.0
OpenVPN: from 2.6.0 before 2.6.21; from 2.7 before 2.7.5 — fixed in 2.6.21, 2.7.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: OpenVPN 2.6.21, 2.7.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://community.openvpn.net/ReleaseHistory#openvpn-2621-released-1-july-2026
https://community.openvpn.net/ReleaseHistory#openvpn-275-released-1-july-2026
https://community.openvpn.net/Security%20Announcements/CVE-2026-12996
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2026/07/msg00013.html

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