CVE-2026-71886: In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, the high-level OpenPGP certificate API accepted a third-party certification or trust delegation from any component key…

PriorityP343high8.2CVSS 4.0

AVNACLATPPRNUINVCNVIHVANSCNSINSANEXCRXIRXARXMAVXMACXMATXMPRXMUIXMVCXMVIXMVAXMSCXMSIXMSAXSXAUXRXVXREXUAmber

EPSS

0.17%

5.6th percentile

In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, the high-level OpenPGP certificate API accepted a third-party certification or trust delegation from any component key of the issuing certificate, without requiring that component to have been granted the authority to certify. OpenPGPCertificate.getCertificationBy() and getDelegationBy() resolve a third-party signature by matching its issuer key identifier against every key of the third-party certificate, then verify the issuing component's binding chain and the signature itself; nothing checked that the issuing component carried the RFC 9580 sec. 5.2.3.29 certification key flag (CERTIFY_OTHER) when the signature was created. A subkey bound only with SIGN_DATA - the online signing subkey of exactly the offline-primary arrangement those key flags exist to express - could therefore issue a positive User ID certification over an attacker-controlled identity, or a full-trust depth-one direct-key delegation of introducer trust, and the API returned it as a valid signature chain attributed to the third-party certificate. An application treating getCertificationBy(...).isValid() or getDelegationBy(...) as an identity or trusted-introducer decision would attribute the attacker's assertion to the offline primary key. The same held for a legacy RSA subkey bound only for encryption, whose algorithm is nonetheless able to sign. This does not forge the primary key's signature or recover any private key; it promotes an already-compromised restricted subkey to the primary key's identity-issuing authority, defeating the containment the key-flag separation provides. A third-party certification or delegation is now attributed to the issuing certificate only when the component key that made it is the primary key, or is a subkey holding CERTIFY_OTHER when the signature was created, so certification-capable subkeys continue to be accepted; primary keys are accepted whatever their key flags say, since a primary key is certification-capable by constr

Affected

1 ranges

Vendor	Product	Version range	Fixed in
legion_of_the_bouncy_castle_inc	bc-java	>= 1.81 < 1.86	1.86

CVSS provenance

nvdv4.08.2HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:Amber

vendor_redhat8.2HIGH

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