CVE-2026-81721

Severity CVSS v4.0:

HIGH

Type:

CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption ('Resource Exhaustion')

Publication date:

27/08/2026

Last modified:

28/08/2026

Description

openssl_encrypt before 1.4.9 fails to validate KDF cost parameters in encrypted file metadata and keystore headers, allowing attackers to trigger unbounded memory allocation. Attackers can craft malicious encrypted files declaring arbitrarily large Argon2, scrypt, or balloon KDF parameters to exhaust system memory and crash the process without authentication.

Impact

Vector 4.0

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N CVSS v4.0 Severity and Metrics:

Base Score: 8.70 HIGH
Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Attack Vector (AV): Network
Attack Complexity (AC): Low
Attack Requirements (AT): None
Privileges Required (PR): None
User Interaction (UI): None
Confidentiality (VC): None
Integrity (VI): None
Availability (VA): High
Confidentiality (SC): None
Integrity (SI): None
Availability (SA): None

Base Score 4.0

8.70

Severity 4.0

HIGH

Vector 3.x

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H CVSS v3.1 Severity and Metrics:

Base Score: 7.50 HIGH
Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector (AV): Network
Attack Complexity (AC): Low
Privileges Required (PR): None
User Interaction (UI): None
Scope (S): Unchanged
Confidentiality (C): None
Integrity (I): None
Availability (A): High

Base Score 3.x

7.50

Severity 3.x

HIGH

CVE-2026-81721

Description

Impact

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools