Forge: X.509 pathLenConstraint not enforced by verifyCertificateChain() for CA certificates without keyUsage
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Fix
- Fixed in 1.4.1
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
Summary
Forge (node-forge), a JavaScript implementation of TLS and X.509 tooling, is affected when applications use its certificate chain verification to validate certificates. The flaw lets certificate chains exceed a CA's declared path length limit without being rejected, which is most relevant to private PKIs whose CA certificates lack a keyUsage extension.
Summarized by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5. Verify details against the original sources.
Read the original description
Forge (also called node-forge) is a native implementation of Transport Layer Security in JavaScript. Prior to 1.4.1, node-forge enforced an X.509 CA certificate's basicConstraints.pathLenConstraint only when that certificate also carried a keyUsage extension. Exploitation requires a path-length-constrained CA without keyUsage that chains to a root trusted by the application, and an attacker who holds that CA's private key or obtains a subordinate CA certificate from it. The attacker could then construct a chain exceeding the declared path length that still passed pki.verifyCertificateChain(). Public web PKI CA certificates normally include keyUsage; private PKIs with CA certificates created without it are more likely to be affected. This issue is fixed in version 1.4.1.
Timeline
- CVE published
- First seen by cve.now
Affected versions
- digitalbazaar forge
fixed in 1.4.1