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Issue summary: Converting an excessively large OCTET...

Critical severity Unreviewed Published Apr 8, 2026 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated May 12, 2026

Package

No package listedSuggest a package

Affected versions

Unknown

Patched versions

Unknown

Description

Issue summary: Converting an excessively large OCTET STRING value to
a hexadecimal string leads to a heap buffer overflow on 32 bit platforms.

Impact summary: A heap buffer overflow may lead to a crash or possibly
an attacker controlled code execution or other undefined behavior.

If an attacker can supply a crafted X.509 certificate with an excessively
large OCTET STRING value in extensions such as the Subject Key Identifier
(SKID) or Authority Key Identifier (AKID) which are being converted to hex,
the size of the buffer needed for the result is calculated as multiplication
of the input length by 3. On 32 bit platforms, this multiplication may overflow
resulting in the allocation of a smaller buffer and a heap buffer overflow.

Applications and services that print or log contents of untrusted X.509
certificates are vulnerable to this issue. As the certificates would have
to have sizes of over 1 Gigabyte, printing or logging such certificates
is a fairly unlikely operation and only 32 bit platforms are affected,
this issue was assigned Low severity.

The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3 and 3.0 are not affected by this
issue, as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Apr 7, 2026
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Apr 8, 2026
Last updated May 12, 2026

Severity

Critical

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS score

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

This score estimates the probability of this vulnerability being exploited within the next 30 days. Data provided by FIRST.
(0th percentile)

Weaknesses

Out-of-bounds Write

The product writes data past the end, or before the beginning, of the intended buffer. Learn more on MITRE.

CVE ID

CVE-2026-31789

GHSA ID

GHSA-j79m-9jxq-788r

Source code

No known source code

Dependabot alerts are not supported on this advisory because it does not have a package from a supported ecosystem with an affected and fixed version.

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