CVE-2026-42790High· 8.1▾ TwilightImproper Certificate Validation vulnerability in Erlang OTP public_key (pubkey_cert and public_key modules) allows a DNS nameConstraints bypass via subject CommonName fallback in TLS hostname verification. Two flaws combine to allow a s…
▾ Twilight zone — High severity, or a signal on a lesser flaw
impact 44.6 · likelihood 0.1 · exploitation 0
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Stakeholder-Specific Vulnerability Categorization from CISA's ADP record at CVE.org: whether exploitation is observed, whether an attack can be automated, and how much of the system is at stake.
Exploit-prediction probability, daily snapshots since Jul 30.
Disclosure to exploitation, from the record and what we observed since indexing it.
Disclosed via NVD
0.3%
Last analysed / modified upstream
0.3% → 0.5%
Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in Erlang OTP public_key (pubkey_cert and public_key modules) allows a DNS nameConstraints bypass via subject CommonName fallback in TLS hostname verification.
Two flaws combine to allow a subordinate CA whose DNS nameConstraints are restricted (e.g. permitted;DNS:allowed.example.com) to issue a leaf certificate that an OTP TLS client accepts as a valid identity for an out-of-scope hostname (e.g. victim.example.com):
First, pubkey_cert:validate_names/6 in lib/public_key/src/pubkey_cert.erl only checks SAN DNS entries against nameConstraints. Per RFC 5280, a permitted DNS subtree only restricts certificates that contain a DNS-typed name. A leaf with no subjectAltName therefore trivially satisfies any permitted;DNS:... constraint regardless of its subject commonName.
Second, public_key:pkix_verify_hostname/3 in lib/public_key/src/public_key.erl falls back to the subject commonName when no subjectAltName is present, extracting id-at-commonName attributes as presented IDs and matching them against the reference hostname. The strict pkix_verify_hostname_match_fun(https) matcher does not suppress this fallback.
The result is that path validation accepts a CN-only leaf under a DNS-constrained intermediate (no SAN means the nameConstraints are not triggered), and hostname verification then accepts it via the CN fallback. The bypass is reachable from stock ssl:connect with verify_peer, a trusted CA, SNI, and the canonical strict https hostname matcher.
This issue affects OTP from OTP 19.3 before OTP 29.0.1, OTP 28.5.0.1, OTP 27.3.4.12 and OTP 26.2.5.21, corresponding to public_key from 1.4 before 1.21.1, 1.20.3.1, 1.17.1.3 and 1.15.1.7.
erlang/otp >= 19.3, < 26.2.5.21erlang/otp >= 27.0, < 27.3.4.12erlang/otp >= 28.0, < 28.5.0.1erlang/otp >= 29.0, < 29.0.1Upgrade past the affected range:
erlang/otp 29.0.1Connected by shared product, vendor, weakness, or advisory.
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