CVE-2026-42770
LowCVSS 3.7Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk18th percentile - higher than 18% of all known CVEs
Summary
The vulnerability in OpenSSL affects the EVP_PKEY_derive_set_peer() function when using a DHX (X9.42) peer key. A malicious peer can exploit the lack of proper subgroup membership check, leading to the recovery of the victim's private key after a few key exchange attempts.
Risk Assessment
The risk for the organization is the potential recovery of the private key by an attacker in scenarios with long-lived DHX keys, especially in CMP environments or government applications. This could compromise communication confidentiality.
Recommendation
It is recommended to immediately update OpenSSL to a patched version that includes a fix for CVE-2026-42770. If an update is not possible, limit the use of DHX X9.42 keys in interactive protocols.
Other vulnerabilities in OpenSSL
See all- CVE-2016-8610High
A denial of service flaw was found in OpenSSL 0.9.8, 1.0.1, 1.0.2 through 1.0.2h, and 1.1.0 in the way the TLS/SSL protocol defined processing of ALERT packets during a connection handshake. A remote attacker could use this flaw to make a TLS/SSL server consume an excessive amount of CPU and fail to accept connections from other clients.
- CVE-2017-3731High
CVE-2017-3731 affects SSL/TLS servers and clients running on 32-bit hosts that may crash due to an out-of-bounds read caused by a truncated packet. For OpenSSL 1.1.0, the crash can be triggered using the CHACHA20/POLY1305 cipher, and for OpenSSL 1.0.2 using RC4-MD5.
- CVE-2017-3730High
In OpenSSL 1.1.0 before 1.1.0d, a malicious server can supply bad parameters for a DHE or ECDHE key exchange, leading to the client attempting to dereference a NULL pointer, resulting in a client crash.
- CVE-2016-7054High
In OpenSSL 1.1.0 before 1.1.0c, TLS connections using *-CHACHA20-POLY1305 ciphersuites are susceptible to a DoS attack by corrupting larger payloads. This can result in an OpenSSL crash.
- CVE-2016-7052High
OpenSSL 1.0.2i has a vulnerability that allows remote attackers to cause application crashes by triggering a CRL operation, leading to a NULL pointer dereference.
- CVE-2016-6305High
The ssl3_read_bytes function in OpenSSL 1.1.0 before version 1.1.0a allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) by triggering a zero-length record in an SSL_peek call.
- CVE-2016-6304High
Multiple memory leaks in t1_lib.c in OpenSSL before 1.0.1u, 1.0.2 before 1.0.2i, and 1.1.0 before 1.1.0a allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via large OCSP Status Request extensions.
- CVE-2016-6302High
The tls_decrypt_ticket function in OpenSSL before 1.1.0 does not consider the HMAC size during validation of the ticket length, allowing remote attackers to cause a denial of service via a ticket that is too short.
- CVE-2016-2179High
The DTLS implementation in OpenSSL before 1.1.0 does not properly restrict the lifetime of queue entries associated with unused out-of-order messages. This allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) by maintaining many crafted DTLS sessions simultaneously.
- CVE-2016-2176High
The X509_NAME_oneline function in OpenSSL before 1.0.1t and 1.0.2 before 1.0.2h allows remote attackers to obtain sensitive information from process stack memory or cause a denial of service (buffer over-read) via crafted EBCDIC ASN.1 data.
Original NVD description (English source)
Issue summary: When EVP_PKEY_derive_set_peer() is called with a DHX (X9.42) peer key, the peer key is not properly checked for the subgroup membership. Impact summary: A malicious peer which presents an X9.42 key carrying the victim's p and g parameters, a forged q = r (a small prime factor of the cofactor (p−1)/q_local), and a public value Y of order r can recover the victim's private key after a small number of key exchange attempts. When EVP_PKEY_derive_set_peer() is called with a DHX (X9.42) peer key, the subgroup membership check Y^q ≡ 1 (mod p) is performed using the peer's own q parameter, not the local key's q. The peer's domain parameters are then matched against the domain parameters of the private key, but the value of q is not compared. A malicious peer who presents an X9.42 key carrying the victim's p, g, a forged q = r (a small prime factor of the cofactor), and a public value Y of order r passes all checks. The shared secret then takes only r distinct values, leaking priv mod r. Repeating for each small-prime factor of the cofactor and combining via CRT recovers the full private key (Lim–Lee / small-subgroup-confinement attack). The realistic attack surface is narrow: principally CMP deployments with long-lived RA/CA DHX keys and bespoke enterprise or government applications using X9.42 DHX static keys with interactive protocols and therefore this issue was assigned Low severity. The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.1.2 and 3.0 are affected by this issue.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS