CVE-2026-14957
FIPS mode assertion failure via malicious CERT payload
At a glance
- Source
- NVD
- EPSS
- EPSS 0.47 % · percentile 40 ()
- State
- PUBLISHED
- Published
- Updated
- Assigner
- libreswan
- NVD status
- Deferred
Description
In FIPS mode, Libreswan's add_decoded_cert() function calls CERT_ExtractPublicKey() and asserts that the result is not NULL. However, CERT_ExtractPublicKey() returns NULL when public key extraction fails, for example if the RSA exponent is set to 0. A remote attacker can send a malformed X.509 certificate in a CERT payload to trigger the assertion, causing the pluto daemon to abort and restart. Continued exploitation causes a denial of service. No remote code execution is possible. Both IKEv1 and IKEv2 are affected. The vulnerability is only exploitable when both the OS and libreswan are running in FIPS mode and at least one CA certificate is loaded. The CERT payload is processed before peer authentication, so no credentials are needed to exploit this. Configurations using only PreSharedKey (PSK) authentication with no CA certificates loaded in the NSS database are not vulnerable.
Weaknesses (CWE)
References
Scores
| Version | Score | Vector | Scored by |
|---|---|---|---|
| CVSS 3.1 | HIGH 7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H | libreswan |
| CVSS 3.1 | HIGH 7.5 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H | NVD · d42dc95b-23f1-4e06-9076-20753a0fb0df (Secondary) |
European references
- ENISA EUVD · EUVD-2026-69820
- GCVE · GCVE-0-2026-14957
Affected products
| Product | Versions |
|---|---|
| The Libreswan Project · libreswan | affected 3.0 ≤ 5.3.1 ; unaffected 5.3.2 |
Sources
| Source | Licence |
|---|---|
| CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5) | CVE Program Terms of Use |
| EPSS (FIRST.org) | FIRST — attribution requested |
| ENISA EUVD | ENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged |
| NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feeds | Public domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD |