CVE-2026-14957
CVE.org · Published
- Record status
- Published
- Identifier year (not publication year)
- 2026
- Source publication
- Source updated
- Imported by cveboard
- Source snapshot
- cve_2026-10-24_midnight_baseline ·
CNA source text (English)
FIPS mode assertion failure via malicious CERT payload
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.
Scoped product and version facts
Fix information unknown; no fixed version is derived here. Missing information does not prove that no fix exists.
Exploitation unknown; this catalogue does not assess exploitation.
libreswan
- Vendor
- The Libreswan Project
- Product
- libreswan
- Platforms
- Unknown
- Default status
unaffected- Package
- libreswan
- Package collection
- https://github.com/libreswan/libreswan
| Version (version) | Status (status) | Version scheme (versionType) | Exclusive end (lessThan) | Inclusive end (lessThanOrEqual) | Status changes (at → status) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.0 | affected | semver | Unavailable | 5.3.1 | None listed |
| 5.3.2 | unaffected | semver | Unavailable | Unavailable | None listed |