Description
Issue summary: A certificate with many nameRelativeToCRLIssuer CRL
distribution points causes disproportionate heap growth when OpenSSL caches
X.509 extensions.

Impact summary: Receiving a crafted certificate from a malicious peer can lead
to significant memory pressure and possible Denial of Service in clients or
in servers that solicit client certificates.

CWE: CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

Description: A certificate or a set of certificates that fits under the limit for
size of certificates accepted from the peer (~100 KiB) can result in allocation
of several hundred MiB of resident memory on the receiving side
during a normal TLS handshake. This may be enough to crash the client or
server, if multiple concurrent connections lead to similarly large memory
allocations.

The fix postpones processing of the CRL distribution points extensions in
certificates to the time when the processed value is required for CRL processing.
This avoids keeping large memory allocations for a long time when such
certificates are received.

FIPS impact: no
The affected code is outside the FIPS module boundary.
Published: 2026-09-29
Score: n/a
EPSS: n/a
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
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Remediation

No vendor fix or workaround currently provided.

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History

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 15:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Issue summary: A certificate with many nameRelativeToCRLIssuer CRL distribution points causes disproportionate heap growth when OpenSSL caches X.509 extensions. Impact summary: Receiving a crafted certificate from a malicious peer can lead to significant memory pressure and possible Denial of Service in clients or in servers that solicit client certificates. CWE: CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling Description: A certificate or a set of certificates that fits under the limit for size of certificates accepted from the peer (~100 KiB) can result in allocation of several hundred MiB of resident memory on the receiving side during a normal TLS handshake. This may be enough to crash the client or server, if multiple concurrent connections lead to similarly large memory allocations. The fix postpones processing of the CRL distribution points extensions in certificates to the time when the processed value is required for CRL processing. This avoids keeping large memory allocations for a long time when such certificates are received. FIPS impact: no The affected code is outside the FIPS module boundary.
Title Excessive Memory Allocation in Relative CRLDP Processing
Weaknesses CWE-770
References

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: openssl

Published:

Updated: 2026-09-29T15:32:11.889Z

Reserved: 2026-04-01T17:36:26.323Z

Link: CVE-2026-35189

cve-icon Vulnrichment

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cve-icon NVD

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cve-icon Redhat

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cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

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Weaknesses