Erlang OTP prior 27.3.4.15/28.5.0.4/29.0.4 Certificate ssl_certificate:handle_incomplete_chain/5 resource consumption

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in Erlang OTP. It has been declared as problematic. This issue affects the function ssl_certificate:handle_incomplete_chain/5 of the component Certificate. The manipulation results in resource consumption. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-58227. The attack may be performed from remote. There is no available exploit.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as problematic has been found in Erlang OTP. Affected is the function ssl_certificate:handle_incomplete_chain/5 of the component Certificate. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a resource consumption vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-400. The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource, thereby enabling an actor to influence the amount of resources consumed, eventually leading to the exhaustion of available resources. This is going to have an impact on availability. CVE summarizes:

The Erlang/OTP ssl application does not detect cycles when reconstructing an incomplete peer certificate chain during a TLS or DTLS handshake. In ssl_certificate:handle_incomplete_chain/5, the received chain is passed to ssl_certificate:build_certificate_chain/5, which walks issuer relationships via ssl_certificate:do_certificate_chain/7 with no cycle detection and no depth limit. When the peer supplies two mutually cross-signed certificates in unordered form (A issues B, B issues A), the issuer lookup alternates between the two certificates and the pair of functions recurses indefinitely, growing the call stack and chain accumulator without bound. An unauthenticated remote attacker can send a crafted certificate chain in a TLS or DTLS Certificate handshake message to exhaust available memory and crash the BEAM node. Only a TCP connection and a partial handshake are required; no authentication or completed handshake is needed, and both TLS/DTLS servers and clients are affected when processing peer certificate messages. This issue affects OTP from OTP 23.2 before OTP 29.0.4, OTP 28.5.0.4 and OTP 27.3.4.15, corresponding to ssl from 10.2 before 11.7.4, 11.6.0.4 and 11.2.12.11.

The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2026-58227 since 06/29/2026. The exploitability is told to be easy. It is possible to launch the attack remotely. The exploitation doesn't require any form of authentication. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1499.

Upgrading to version 27.3.4.15, 28.5.0.4 or 29.0.4 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• Erlang

Name

• OTP

Website

• Product: https://github.com/erlang/otp/

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