CVE-2026-69249

Summary

When resolving invalid certificate chains that include duplicate copies of self-signed certificates, the processing recursively invokes the same candidate, leading to an exponential blowup. Although the limitation that the chain depth cannot exceed a specified maximum depth prevents unbounded recursion and guarantees termination, an attacker-controlled certificate chain can lead the processing to easily take more than 5s to reject in testing. This amplification could form the basis for a resource exhaustion denial of service attack.

This work was completed by Trail of Bits as part of the Patch The Planet project in collaboration with OpenAI. The finding was identified primarily by the Codex coding agent, and manually reviewed before submission.

Details

The core issue arises in the recursive nature of build_chain_inner, which does not de-duplicate against previously analyzed candidates.

    fn build_chain_inner(
        &self,
        working_cert: &VerificationCertificate<'chain, B>,
        current_depth: u8,
        working_cert_extensions: &Extensions<'chain>,
        name_chain: NameChain<'_, 'chain>,
        budget: &mut Budget,
    ) -> ValidationResult<'chain, Chain<'chain, B>, B> {
        if let Some(nc) = working_cert_extensions.get_extension(&NAME_CONSTRAINTS_OID) {
            name_chain.evaluate_constraints(&nc.value()?, budget)?;
        }

        // Look in the store's root set to see if the working cert is listed.
        // If it is, we've reached the end.
        if self.store.contains(working_cert) {
            return Ok(vec![working_cert.clone()]);
        }

        // Check that our current depth does not exceed our policy-configured
        // max depth. We do this after the root set check, since the depth
        // only measures the intermediate chain's length, not the root or leaf.
        if current_depth > self.policy.max_chain_depth {
            return Err(ValidationError::new(ValidationErrorKind::Other(
                "chain construction exceeds max depth".into(),
            )));
        }

        // Otherwise, we collect a list of potential issuers for this cert,
        // and continue with the first that verifies.
        let mut last_err: Option<ValidationError<'_, B>> = None;
        for issuing_cert_candidate in self.potential_issuers(working_cert) {
            // A candidate issuer is said to verify if it both
            // signs for the working certificate and conforms to the
            // policy.
            let issuer_extensions = issuing_cert_candidate.certificate().extensions()?;
            match self.policy.valid_issuer(
                issuing_cert_candidate,
                working_cert,
                current_depth,
                &issuer_extensions,
            ) {
                Ok(_) => {
                    match self.build_chain_inner(

A sufficient patch is to track valid issuers, and to skip seen ones before recursing. By tracking valid issuers only, validation and custom extension-policy callbacks still run.

          let mut seen_valid_issuers = Vec::<&VerificationCertificate<'chain, B>>::new();
          for issuing_cert_candidate in self.potential_issuers(working_cert) {
          . . .
                  Ok(_) => {
                      if seen_valid_issuers.contains(&issuing_cert_candidate) {
                         continue;
                      }
                      seen_valid_issuers.push(issuing_cert_candidate);
 
                      match self.build_chain_inner(
                          issuing_cert_candidate,
                          // NOTE(ww): According to RFC 5280, we should only

In testing, this fix removed the exponential blowup without breaking apparent correctness.

duplicates,max_depth,result,seconds
1,7,rejected,0.000464 -> 1,7,rejected,0.000667
2,7,rejected,0.025154 -> 2,7,rejected,0.001229
3,7,rejected,0.489924 -> 3,7,rejected,0.001619 
4,7,rejected,4.309403 ->…

cryptography is a package designed to expose cryptographic primitives and recipes to Python developers.

Security Fix(es):

python-cryptography is a package designed to expose cryptographic primitives and recipes to Python developers. Prior to 49.0.0, when resolving invalid certificate chains that include duplicate copies of self-signed certificates, the processing recursively invokes the same candidate, leading to an exponential blowup. Although the limitation that the chain depth cannot exceed a specified maximum depth prevents unbounded recursion and guarantees termination, an attacker-controlled certificate chain can lead the processing to easily take more than 5s to reject in testing. This amplification could form the basis for a resource exhaustion denial of service attack. The core issue arises in the recursive nature of build_chain_inner, which does not de-duplicate against previously analyzed candidates. As the correctness of validation is not affected, the integrity of a system cannot be compromised through this vector, only its availability. This issue is fixed in 49.0.0.(CVE-2026-69249)

cryptography is a package designed to expose cryptographic primitives and recipes to Python developers.

Security Fix(es):

python-cryptography is a package designed to expose cryptographic primitives and recipes to Python developers. Prior to 49.0.0, when resolving invalid certificate chains that include duplicate copies of self-signed certificates, the processing recursively invokes the same candidate, leading to an exponential blowup. Although the limitation that the chain depth cannot exceed a specified maximum depth prevents unbounded recursion and guarantees termination, an attacker-controlled certificate chain can lead the processing to easily take more than 5s to reject in testing. This amplification could form the basis for a resource exhaustion denial of service attack. The core issue arises in the recursive nature of build_chain_inner, which does not de-duplicate against previously analyzed candidates. As the correctness of validation is not affected, the integrity of a system cannot be compromised through this vector, only its availability. This issue is fixed in 49.0.0.(CVE-2026-69249)

cryptography is a package designed to expose cryptographic primitives and recipes to Python developers.

Security Fix(es):

python-cryptography is a package designed to expose cryptographic primitives and recipes to Python developers. Prior to 49.0.0, when resolving invalid certificate chains that include duplicate copies of self-signed certificates, the processing recursively invokes the same candidate, leading to an exponential blowup. Although the limitation that the chain depth cannot exceed a specified maximum depth prevents unbounded recursion and guarantees termination, an attacker-controlled certificate chain can lead the processing to easily take more than 5s to reject in testing. This amplification could form the basis for a resource exhaustion denial of service attack. The core issue arises in the recursive nature of build_chain_inner, which does not de-duplicate against previously analyzed candidates. As the correctness of validation is not affected, the integrity of a system cannot be compromised through this vector, only its availability. This issue is fixed in 49.0.0.(CVE-2026-69249)

Summary

When resolving invalid certificate chains that include duplicate copies of self-signed certificates, the processing recursively invokes the same candidate, leading to an exponential blowup. Although the limitation that the chain depth cannot exceed a specified maximum depth prevents unbounded recursion and guarantees termination, an attacker-controlled certificate chain can lead the processing to easily take more than 5s to reject in testing. This amplification could form the basis for a resource exhaustion denial of service attack.

This work was completed by Trail of Bits as part of the Patch The Planet project in collaboration with OpenAI. The finding was identified primarily by the Codex coding agent, and manually reviewed before submission.

Details

The core issue arises in the recursive nature of build_chain_inner, which does not de-duplicate against previously analyzed candidates.

    fn build_chain_inner(
        &self,
        working_cert: &VerificationCertificate<'chain, B>,
        current_depth: u8,
        working_cert_extensions: &Extensions<'chain>,
        name_chain: NameChain<'_, 'chain>,
        budget: &mut Budget,
    ) -> ValidationResult<'chain, Chain<'chain, B>, B> {
        if let Some(nc) = working_cert_extensions.get_extension(&NAME_CONSTRAINTS_OID) {
            name_chain.evaluate_constraints(&nc.value()?, budget)?;
        }

        // Look in the store's root set to see if the working cert is listed.
        // If it is, we've reached the end.
        if self.store.contains(working_cert) {
            return Ok(vec![working_cert.clone()]);
        }

        // Check that our current depth does not exceed our policy-configured
        // max depth. We do this after the root set check, since the depth
        // only measures the intermediate chain's length, not the root or leaf.
        if current_depth > self.policy.max_chain_depth {
            return Err(ValidationError::new(ValidationErrorKind::Other(
                "chain construction exceeds max depth".into(),
            )));
        }

        // Otherwise, we collect a list of potential issuers for this cert,
        // and continue with the first that verifies.
        let mut last_err: Option<ValidationError<'_, B>> = None;
        for issuing_cert_candidate in self.potential_issuers(working_cert) {
            // A candidate issuer is said to verify if it both
            // signs for the working certificate and conforms to the
            // policy.
            let issuer_extensions = issuing_cert_candidate.certificate().extensions()?;
            match self.policy.valid_issuer(
                issuing_cert_candidate,
                working_cert,
                current_depth,
                &issuer_extensions,
            ) {
                Ok(_) => {
                    match self.build_chain_inner(

A sufficient patch is to track valid issuers, and to skip seen ones before recursing. By tracking valid issuers only, validation and custom extension-policy callbacks still run.

          let mut seen_valid_issuers = Vec::<&VerificationCertificate<'chain, B>>::new();
          for issuing_cert_candidate in self.potential_issuers(working_cert) {
          . . .
                  Ok(_) => {
                      if seen_valid_issuers.contains(&issuing_cert_candidate) {
                         continue;
                      }
                      seen_valid_issuers.push(issuing_cert_candidate);
 
                      match self.build_chain_inner(
                          issuing_cert_candidate,
                          // NOTE(ww): According to RFC 5280, we should only

In testing, this fix removed the exponential blowup without breaking apparent correctness.

duplicates,max_depth,result,seconds
1,7,rejected,0.000464 -> 1,7,rejected,0.000667
2,7,rejected,0.025154 -> 2,7,rejected,0.001229
3,7,rejected,0.489924 -> 3,7,rejected,0.001619 
4,7,rejected,4.309403 ->…

Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language, which includes modules, classes, exceptions, very high level dynamic data types and dynamic typing. Python supports interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as well as to various windowing systems.

Security Fix(es):

• python-cryptography: python-cryptography: Duplicate self-signed intermediates can cause exponential path-building (CVE-2026-69249)

• python-cryptography: python-cryptography: python-cryptography verifier accepts wildcard DNS names allowing escape from permittedSubtrees (CVE-2026-69248)

For more details about the security issue(s), including the impact, a CVSS score, acknowledgments, and other related information, refer to the CVE page(s) listed in the References section.

Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language, which includes modules, classes, exceptions, very high level dynamic data types and dynamic typing. Python supports interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as well as to various windowing systems.

Security Fix(es):

• python-cryptography: python-cryptography: Duplicate self-signed intermediates can cause exponential path-building (CVE-2026-69249)

• python-cryptography: python-cryptography: python-cryptography verifier accepts wildcard DNS names allowing escape from permittedSubtrees (CVE-2026-69248)

For more details about the security issue(s), including the impact, a CVSS score, acknowledgments, and other related information, refer to the CVE page(s) listed in the References section.

Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language, which includes modules, classes, exceptions, very high level dynamic data types and dynamic typing. Python supports interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as well as to various windowing systems.

Security Fix(es):

• python-cryptography: python-cryptography: Duplicate self-signed intermediates can cause exponential path-building (CVE-2026-69249)

For more details about the security issue(s), including the impact, a CVSS score, acknowledgments, and other related information, refer to the CVE page(s) listed in the References section.

python-cryptography is a package designed to expose cryptographic primitives and recipes to Python developers. In versions 42.0.0 through 48.0.0, when resolving invalid certificate chains that include duplicate copies of self-signed certificates, the processing recursively invokes the same candidate, leading to an exponential blowup. Although the limitation that the chain depth cannot exceed a specified maximum depth prevents unbounded recursion and guarantees termination, an attacker-controlled certificate chain can lead the processing to easily take more than 5s to reject in testing. This amplification could form the basis for a resource exhaustion denial of service attack. The core issue arises in the recursive nature of build_chain_inner, which does not de-duplicate against previously analyzed candidates. As the correctness of validation is not affected, the integrity of a system cannot be compromised through this vector, only its availability. This issue is fixed in 49.0.0.

Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language, which includes modules, classes, exceptions, very high level dynamic data types and dynamic typing. Python supports interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as well as to various windowing systems.

Security Fix(es):

• python-cryptography: python-cryptography: Duplicate self-signed intermediates can cause exponential path-building (CVE-2026-69249)
• python-cryptography: python-cryptography: python-cryptography verifier accepts wildcard DNS names allowing escape from permittedSubtrees (CVE-2026-69248)

For more details about the security issue(s), including the impact, a CVSS score, acknowledgments, and other related information, refer to the CVE page(s) listed in the References section.

Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language, which includes modules, classes, exceptions, very high level dynamic data types and dynamic typing. Python supports interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as well as to various windowing systems.

Security Fix(es):

• python-cryptography: python-cryptography: Duplicate self-signed intermediates can cause exponential path-building (CVE-2026-69249)
• python-cryptography: python-cryptography: python-cryptography verifier accepts wildcard DNS names allowing escape from permittedSubtrees (CVE-2026-69248)

For more details about the security issue(s), including the impact, a CVSS score, acknowledgments, and other related information, refer to the CVE page(s) listed in the References section.

Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language, which includes modules, classes, exceptions, very high level dynamic data types and dynamic typing. Python supports interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as well as to various windowing systems.

Security Fix(es):

• python-cryptography: python-cryptography: Duplicate self-signed intermediates can cause exponential path-building (CVE-2026-69249)

For more details about the security issue(s), including the impact, a CVSS score, acknowledgments, and other related information, refer to the CVE page(s) listed in the References section.

python-cryptography is a package designed to expose cryptographic primitives and recipes to Python developers. In versions 42.0.0 through 48.0.0, when resolving invalid certificate chains that include duplicate copies of self-signed certificates, the processing recursively invokes the same candidate, leading to an exponential blowup. Although the limitation that the chain depth cannot exceed a specified maximum depth prevents unbounded recursion and guarantees termination, an attacker-controlled certificate chain can lead the processing to easily take more than 5s to reject in testing. This amplification could form the basis for a resource exhaustion denial of service attack. The core issue arises in the recursive nature of build_chain_inner, which does not de-duplicate against previously analyzed candidates. As the correctness of validation is not affected, the integrity of a system cannot be compromised through this vector, only its availability. This issue is fixed in 49.0.0.

TuxCare rebuilt cryptography to address 2 CVEs. Fixed in 46.0.7.post2+tuxcare.

TuxCare rebuilt cryptography to address 2 CVEs. Fixed in 45.0.7.post4+tuxcare.

TuxCare rebuilt cryptography to address 2 CVEs. Fixed in 44.0.3.post4+tuxcare.

TuxCare rebuilt cryptography to address 1 CVE. Fixed in 43.0.1.post2+tuxcare.

TuxCare rebuilt cryptography to address 1 CVE. Fixed in 42.0.8.post3+tuxcare.

TuxCare rebuilt cryptography to address 1 CVE. Fixed in 42.0.0.post2+tuxcare.

TuxCare rebuilt cryptography to address 1 CVE. Fixed in 43.0.3.post4+tuxcare.

This update for python-cryptography fixes the following issues:

• CVE-2026-69247: PKCS#7 EnvelopedData decryption exposes a Bleichenbacher oracle through distinguishable errors and timing (bsc#1273551).
• CVE-2026-69248: verifier accepts wildcard DNS names allowing escape from permittedSubtrees (bsc#1273549).
• CVE-2026-69249: duplicate self-signed intermediates can cause exponential path-building (bsc#1273516).

Root has patched CVE-2026-69249 in the cryptography package for Root:PyPI. Multiple fixed versions available.

This update for python-cryptography fixes the following issues:

• CVE-2026-69248: verifier accepts wildcard DNS names allowing escape from permittedSubtrees (bsc#1273549).
• CVE-2026-69249: duplicate self-signed intermediates can cause exponential path-building (bsc#1273516).

This update for python-cryptography fixes the following issues:

• CVE-2026-69248: verifier accepts wildcard DNS names allowing escape from permittedSubtrees (bsc#1273549).
• CVE-2026-69249: duplicate self-signed intermediates can cause exponential path-building (bsc#1273516).

This update for python-cryptography fixes the following issues:

• CVE-2026-69247: PKCS#7 EnvelopedData decryption exposes a Bleichenbacher oracle through distinguishable errors and timing (bsc#1273551).
• CVE-2026-69248: verifier accepts wildcard DNS names allowing escape from permittedSubtrees (bsc#1273549).
• CVE-2026-69249: duplicate self-signed intermediates can cause exponential path-building (bsc#1273516).

This update for python-cryptography fixes the following issues:

• CVE-2026-69247: PKCS#7 EnvelopedData decryption exposes a Bleichenbacher oracle through distinguishable errors and timing (bsc#1273551).
• CVE-2026-69248: verifier accepts wildcard DNS names allowing escape from permittedSubtrees (bsc#1273549).
• CVE-2026-69249: duplicate self-signed intermediates can cause exponential path-building (bsc#1273516).

It was discovered that python-cryptography incorrectly accepted objects with immutable buffers when performing certain cipher operations. This would result in corrupted output, contrary to expectations. This issue only affected Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. (CVE-2023-23931)

It was discovered that python-cryptography reported the outcome of decrypting PKCS#7 enveloped data in distinguishable ways, and with observable timing differences. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to recover the key used to encrypt the message contents, and obtain sensitive information. This issue only affected Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. (CVE-2026-69247)

Jack Lloyd discovered that python-cryptography incorrectly handled wildcard DNS names when enforcing the name constraints of a certificate authority. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to have an invalid certificate chain accepted, and use names outside of the permitted ones. This issue only affected Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. (CVE-2026-69248)

Samuel Judson discovered that python-cryptography incorrectly handled certificate chains that contained duplicate certificates. A remote attacker could possibly use this issue to cause python-cryptography to use excessive resources, leading to a denial of service. This issue only affected Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. (CVE-2026-69249)