What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-33896: Forge has a basicConstraints bypass in its certificate chain verification (RFC 5280 violation)

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.1 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2026-03-27 · updated 2026-10-26
• Weakness: CWE-295

Description

Forge (also called `node-forge`) is a native implementation of Transport Layer Security in JavaScript. Prior to version 1.4.0, `pki.verifyCertificateChain()` does not enforce RFC 5280 basicConstraints requirements when an intermediate certificate lacks both the `basicConstraints` and `keyUsage` extensions. This allows any leaf certificate (without these extensions) to act as a CA and sign other certificates, which node-forge will accept as valid. Version 1.4.0 patches the issue.

Affected products

• digitalbazaar forge: through 1.3.3
• Npm Node-Forge: before 1.4.0 — fixed in 1.4.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Npm Node-Forge 1.4.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/commit/2e492832fb25227e6b647cbe1ac981c123171e90
• https://github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/security/advisories/GHSA-2328-f5f3-gj25
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:13826
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:24761
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:34342
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:9742
• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-33896
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2452458
• https://github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/security/advisories/GHSA-2328-f5f3-gj25
• https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-33896.json

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