OCSP responder certificate validity period not checked in public_key

Open Source Vulnerabilities CVE-2026-42791

Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in Erlang OTP public_key (pubkey_ocsp module) allows forged OCSP responses signed with an expired responder certificate to be accepted as valid. OCSP response verification in pubkey_ocsp:verify_response/5 and pubkey_ocsp:is_authorized_responder/3 in lib/public_key/src/pubkey_ocsp.erl does not check the validity period (notBefore/notAfter) of the OCSP responder certificate. An attacker who has obtained the private key of an expired CA-designated OCSP responder certificate can forge OCSP responses that Erlang/OTP accepts as valid. This affects TLS clients using OCSP stapling via the ssl application: a malicious or compromised server can present a revoked TLS certificate together with a forged OCSP response signed by an expired responder key, and the client will accept the revoked certificate as valid. It also affects applications calling public_key:pkix_ocsp_validate/5 directly, where the impact depends on the use case — server-side client certificate validation using this API may allow authentication bypass with a revoked client certificate. This issue affects OTP from OTP 27.0 before OTP 29.0.1, OTP 28.5.0.1 and OTP 27.3.4.12, corresponding to public_key from 1.16 before 1.21.1, 1.20.3.1 and 1.17.1.3.

Open Source Vulnerabilities EEF-CVE-2026-42791

## Summary Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in Erlang OTP public\_key (pubkey\_ocsp module) allows forged OCSP responses signed with an expired responder certificate to be accepted as valid. OCSP response verification in pubkey\_ocsp:verify\_response/5 and pubkey\_ocsp:is\_authorized\_responder/3 in lib/public\_key/src/pubkey\_ocsp.erl does not check the validity period (notBefore/notAfter) of the OCSP responder certificate. An attacker who has obtained the private key of an expired CA-designated OCSP responder certificate can forge OCSP responses that Erlang/OTP accepts as valid. This affects TLS clients using OCSP stapling via the ssl application: a malicious or compromised server can present a revoked TLS certificate together with a forged OCSP response signed by an expired responder key, and the client will accept the revoked certificate as valid. It also affects applications calling public\_key:pkix\_ocsp\_validate/5 directly, where the impact depends on the use case — server-side client certificate validation using this API may allow authentication bypass with a revoked client certificate. This issue affects OTP from OTP 27.0 before OTP 29.0.1, OTP 28.5.0.1 and OTP 27.3.4.12, corresponding to public\_key from 1.16 before 1.21.1, 1.20.3.1 and 1.17.1.3. ## Workaround \* For TLS clients using the ssl application, disable OCSP stapling by setting {stapling, no\_staple} in the client options, or switch to CRL-based revocation checking with {crl\_check, true}. \* For applications calling public\_key:pkix\_ocsp\_validate/5 directly, validate the responder certificate's validity period in application code before calling the function. ## Configuration For the ssl application, OCSP stapling must be enabled by setting the stapling option to staple in the TLS client options. OCSP stapling is not enabled by default. Applications calling public\_key:pkix\_ocsp\_validate/5 directly are unconditionally affected when that function is used.