Issue summary: A TLS 1.3 connection using certificate compression can be forced to allocate a large buffer before decompression without checking against the configured certificate size limit. Impact summary: An attacker can cause per-connection memory allocations of up to approximately 22 MiB and extra CPU work, potentially leading to service degradation or resource exhaustion (Denial of Service). In affected configurations, the peer-supplied uncompressed certificate length from a CompressedCertificate message is used to grow a heap buffer prior to decompression. This length is not bounded by the max_cert_list setting, which otherwise constrains certificate message sizes. An attacker can exploit this to cause large per-connection allocations followed by handshake failure. No memory corruption or information disclosure occurs. This issue only affects builds where TLS 1.3 certificate compression is compiled in (i.e., not OPENSSL_NO_COMP_ALG) and at least one compression algorithm (brotli, zlib, or zstd) is available, and where the compression extension is negotiated. Both clients receiving a server CompressedCertificate and servers in mutual TLS scenarios receiving a client CompressedCertificate are affected. Servers that do not request client certificates are not vulnerable to client-initiated attacks. Users can mitigate this issue by setting SSL_OP_NO_RX_CERTIFICATE_COMPRESSION to disable receiving compressed certificates. The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4 and 3.3 are not affected by this issue, as the TLS implementation is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary. OpenSSL 3.6, 3.5, 3.4 and 3.3 are vulnerable to this issue. OpenSSL 3.0, 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 are not affected by this issue.
History

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 18:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:openssl:openssl:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'none', 'Technical Impact': 'partial'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


Wed, 28 Jan 2026 12:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
First Time appeared Openssl
Openssl openssl
Vendors & Products Openssl
Openssl openssl

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Weaknesses CWE-770
References
Metrics threat_severity

None

cvssV3_1

{'score': 5.9, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H'}

threat_severity

Low


Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description Issue summary: A TLS 1.3 connection using certificate compression can be forced to allocate a large buffer before decompression without checking against the configured certificate size limit. Impact summary: An attacker can cause per-connection memory allocations of up to approximately 22 MiB and extra CPU work, potentially leading to service degradation or resource exhaustion (Denial of Service). In affected configurations, the peer-supplied uncompressed certificate length from a CompressedCertificate message is used to grow a heap buffer prior to decompression. This length is not bounded by the max_cert_list setting, which otherwise constrains certificate message sizes. An attacker can exploit this to cause large per-connection allocations followed by handshake failure. No memory corruption or information disclosure occurs. This issue only affects builds where TLS 1.3 certificate compression is compiled in (i.e., not OPENSSL_NO_COMP_ALG) and at least one compression algorithm (brotli, zlib, or zstd) is available, and where the compression extension is negotiated. Both clients receiving a server CompressedCertificate and servers in mutual TLS scenarios receiving a client CompressedCertificate are affected. Servers that do not request client certificates are not vulnerable to client-initiated attacks. Users can mitigate this issue by setting SSL_OP_NO_RX_CERTIFICATE_COMPRESSION to disable receiving compressed certificates. The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4 and 3.3 are not affected by this issue, as the TLS implementation is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary. OpenSSL 3.6, 3.5, 3.4 and 3.3 are vulnerable to this issue. OpenSSL 3.0, 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 are not affected by this issue.
Title TLS 1.3 CompressedCertificate excessive memory allocation
Weaknesses CWE-789
References

cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: openssl

Published: 2026-01-27T16:01:22.399Z

Updated: 2026-01-29T15:03:51.754Z

Reserved: 2025-11-24T15:00:43.637Z

Link: CVE-2025-66199

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2026-01-29T15:03:34.645Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Analyzed

Published: 2026-01-27T16:16:15.777

Modified: 2026-02-02T18:37:19.613

Link: CVE-2025-66199

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Low

Publid Date: 2026-01-27T00:00:00Z

Links: CVE-2025-66199 - Bugzilla