CVE-2026-71889 Vulnerability Analysis & Exploit Details

CVE-2026-71889
Vulnerability Scoring

Analysis In Progress
Analysis In Progress

Attack Complexity Details

  • Attack Complexity:
    Attack Complexity Analysis In Progress
  • Attack Vector:
    Attack Vector Under Analysis
  • Privileges Required: None
    No authentication is required for exploitation.
  • Scope:
    Impact is confined to the initially vulnerable component.
  • User Interaction: None
    No user interaction is necessary for exploitation.

CVE-2026-71889 Details

Status: Received on 03 Oct 2026, 09:17 UTC

Published on: 03 Oct 2026, 09:17 UTC

CVSS Release:

CVE-2026-71889 Vulnerability Summary

CVE-2026-71889: In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, neither copy of PKIXCertPathReviewer - org.bouncycastle.pkix.jcajce.PKIXCertPathReviewer nor the legacy org.bouncycastle.x509.PKIXCertPathReviewer - applied X.509 name constraints to the end-entity certificate. checkNameConstraints walked the path with a loop bound of index greater than zero, which is the bound the CA-only steps require, but index zero is the target certificate under the standard CertPath ordering, so the permitted and excluded subtree checks of RFC 5280 sec. 6.1.3 (b) and (c) never ran against the leaf's subject DN or its subjectAltName. A chain whose leaf violated a NameConstraints extension imposed by its own issuing CA therefore reported isValidCertPath() true with an empty error list, while CertPathValidator.getInstance("PKIX", "BC"), which shares no code with the reviewer, rejected the identical chain against the identical trust anchor. An application using the reviewer to make the trust decision rather than for diagnostics alongside a real validation accepted a certificate the constrained CA was never authorised to issue. Both copies now check every certificate in the path including the target, waive the sec. 4.2.1.10 self-issued exemption for the final certificate as sec. 6.1.3 requires, and skip the sec. 6.1.4 (g) constraint-accumulation step for the target. This issue also affects Bouncy Castle for Java LTS before 2.73.13, which carries only the org.bouncycastle.pkix.jcajce copy of the reviewer. It also affects 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).

Assessing the Risk of CVE-2026-71889

Access Complexity Graph

The exploitability of CVE-2026-71889 depends on two key factors: attack complexity (the level of effort required to execute an exploit) and privileges required (the access level an attacker needs).

Exploitability Analysis for CVE-2026-71889

No exploitability data is available for CVE-2026-71889.

Understanding AC and PR

A lower complexity and fewer privilege requirements make exploitation easier. Security teams should evaluate these aspects to determine the urgency of mitigation strategies, such as patch management and access control policies.

Attack Complexity (AC) measures the difficulty in executing an exploit. A high AC means that specific conditions must be met, making an attack more challenging, while a low AC means the vulnerability can be exploited with minimal effort.

Privileges Required (PR) determine the level of system access necessary for an attack. Vulnerabilities requiring no privileges are more accessible to attackers, whereas high privilege requirements limit exploitation to authorized users with elevated access.

CVSS Score Breakdown Chart

Above is the CVSS Sub-score Breakdown for CVE-2026-71889, illustrating how Base, Impact, and Exploitability factors combine to form the overall severity rating. A higher sub-score typically indicates a more severe or easier-to-exploit vulnerability.

CIA Impact Analysis

Below is the Impact Analysis for CVE-2026-71889, showing how Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability might be affected if the vulnerability is exploited. Higher values usually signal greater potential damage.

  • Confidentiality: None
    CVE-2026-71889 does not compromise confidentiality.
  • Integrity: None
    CVE-2026-71889 does not impact data integrity.
  • Availability: None
    CVE-2026-71889 does not affect system availability.

CVE-2026-71889 References

External References

CWE Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-295

CAPEC Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification

  • Creating a Rogue Certification Authority Certificate CAPEC-459 An adversary exploits a weakness resulting from using a hashing algorithm with weak collision resistance to generate certificate signing requests (CSR) that contain collision blocks in their "to be signed" parts. The adversary submits one CSR to be signed by a trusted certificate authority then uses the signed blob to make a second certificate appear signed by said certificate authority. Due to the hash collision, both certificates, though different, hash to the same value and so the signed blob works just as well in the second certificate. The net effect is that the adversary's second X.509 certificate, which the Certification Authority has never seen, is now signed and validated by that Certification Authority.
  • Signature Spoofing by Improper Validation CAPEC-475 An adversary exploits a cryptographic weakness in the signature verification algorithm implementation to generate a valid signature without knowing the key.

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