CVE-2026-42791: OCSP responder certificate validity period not checked in public_key

Severity: low (CVSS 3.7 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-05-27 · updated 2026-10-26
Weakness: CWE-295

Description

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.

Affected products

Erlang OTP: from 27.0 before 27.3.4.12; from 28.0 before 28.5.0.1; from 29.0 before 29.0.1 — fixed in 27.3.4.12, 28.5.0.1, 29.0.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Erlang OTP 27.3.4.12, 28.5.0.1, 29.0.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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