Vulnerability Details CVE-2026-42791
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 27.3.4.12, 28.5.0.1, and 29.0.1 corresponding to public_key from 1.16 before 1.17.1.3, 1.20.3.1, and 1.21.1.
Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score
EPSS Score 0.001
EPSS Ranking 16.4%
CVSS Severity
CVSS v3 Score 3.7
Products affected by CVE-2026-42791
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.0
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.0.1
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.1
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.1.1
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.1.2
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.1.3
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.2
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.2.1
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.2.2
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.2.3
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.2.4
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.1
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.2
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.3
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4.1
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4.10
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4.11
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4.2
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4.3
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4.4
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4.5
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4.6
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4.7
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4.8
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:27.3.4.9
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.0
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.0.1
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.0.2
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.0.3
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.0.4
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.1
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.1.1
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.2
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.3
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.3.1
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.3.2
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.3.3
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.4
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.4.1
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.4.2
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.4.3
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:28.5
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cpe:2.3:a:erlang:erlang/otp:29.0