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OpenAdvisories
High · 8.7 CVE-2026-71888 EUVD-2026-91991GHSA-j453-27jp-4cph

CMS AuthenticatedData exposes attacker-inserted authAttrs when digestAlgorithm is absent

Published Oct 3, 2026 · Updated Oct 5, 2026 · Assigned by bcorg

Description

In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, the streaming CMS AuthenticatedData parser accepted a message whose digestAlgorithm and authAttrs fields disagreed about whether authenticated attributes were present. RFC 5652 sec. 9.1 pairs the two, requiring that authAttrs be present whenever digestAlgorithm is, and sec. 9.2 makes the MAC cover the DER encoding of authAttrs when they are present and the eContent OCTET STRING directly when they are not. CMSAuthenticatedDataParser has to choose between those two in its constructor, before it can reach authAttrs, which comes later in the SEQUENCE, so it chose on digestAlgorithm alone: for a message with digestAlgorithm absent but authAttrs present it verified the content MAC and then returned the attributes through getAuthAttrs() as though they had been authenticated, when the MAC had never covered them. An attacker able to modify a message in transit could insert an authenticated attribute, such as an RFC 2634 ESSSecurityLabel, into an otherwise valid message while holding neither the key-encryption key nor the content-MAC key, and an application taking an authorization, routing or labelling decision from those attributes would act on attacker-chosen values. The content itself remained MAC-bound. asn1.cms.AuthenticatedData now rejects the mismatched pairing when parsing and CMSAuthenticatedDataParser cross-checks the two fields once authAttrs is read. This is a variant of CVE-2026-59642, which bound the content to the MAC for messages that legitimately carry authAttrs, and which does not address this case. This issue also affects Bouncy Castle for Java LTS before 2.73.13, and Bouncy Castle for Java FIPS (BC-FJA) before bcpkix-fips 1.0.13 (1.0.X series), 2.0.13 (2.0.X series) and 2.1.13 (2.1.X series), and bcutil-fips 2.0.8 (2.0.X series) and 2.1.8 (2.1.X series).

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
Legion of the Bouncy Castle BC-JAVA < 1.86, 1.70 – < 1.86 1.86
Legion of the Bouncy Castle BC-LTS-JAVA 2.73.0 – < 2.73.13 2.73.13
Legion of the Bouncy Castle BC-FJA 1.0.0 – < 1.0.13, 2.0.0 – < 2.0.13, 2.1.0 – < 2.1.13, 2.0.0 – < 2.0.8, 2.1.0 – < 2.1.8 1.0.13

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 bouncycastle 1.86-1 —
Debian 13 bouncycastle No fix yet —
Debian 12 bouncycastle No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 bouncycastle No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —
Show 5 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 22.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
SLES 15 SP7 bouncycastle 1.86-150200.3.41.1 SUSE-SU-2026:4797-1
SLES 15 SP6 bouncycastle 1.86-150200.3.41.1 SUSE-SU-2026:4797-1
SLES 15 SP5 bouncycastle 1.86-150200.3.41.1 SUSE-SU-2026:4797-1
SLES 15 SP4 bouncycastle 1.86-150200.3.41.1 SUSE-SU-2026:4797-1
Show 7 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
SLES for SAP 16.0 bouncycastle 1.86-160000.1.1 SUSE-SU-2026:24461-1
SLES for SAP 15 SP6 bouncycastle 1.86-150200.3.41.1 SUSE-SU-2026:4797-1
SLES for SAP 15 SP5 bouncycastle 1.86-150200.3.41.1 SUSE-SU-2026:4797-1
SLES for SAP 15 SP4 bouncycastle 1.86-150200.3.41.1 SUSE-SU-2026:4797-1
SLES 16.0 bouncycastle 1.86-160000.1.1 SUSE-SU-2026:24461-1
SLE HPC 15 SP5 bouncycastle 1.86-150200.3.41.1 SUSE-SU-2026:4797-1
SLE HPC 15 SP4 bouncycastle 1.86-150200.3.41.1 SUSE-SU-2026:4797-1
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
openSUSE Tumbleweed bouncycastle 1.86-1.1 openSUSE-SU-2026:12090-1
openSUSE Leap 16.0 bouncycastle 1.86-160000.1.1 openSUSE-SU-2026:22169-1

Advisories 6

References