CVE-2026-71886 (GCVE-0-2026-71886)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-10-03 08:46 – Updated: 2026-10-03 08:46
VLAI
Title
OpenPGP certification accepted from a subkey without certification authority
Summary
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 construction and certificates carrying no key flags subpacket at all are common. Third-party revocations are deliberately outside the rule, since declining to honour one would keep trust alive rather than withdraw it.
CWE
Impacted products
Vendor Product Version CPE status
Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. BC-JAVA Affected: 1.81 , < 1.86 (maven)
guessed Create a notification for this product.
Show details on NVD website

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          "packageURL": "pkg:maven/org.bouncycastle/bcpg-jdk18on",
          "platforms": [
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          "product": "BC-JAVA",
          "programFiles": [
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          ],
          "repo": "https://github.com/bcgit/bc-java",
          "vendor": "Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc.",
          "versions": [
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              "version": "1.81",
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          "type": "reporter",
          "value": "Bhargava Shastry"
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              "value": "\u003cp\u003eIn 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\u0027s 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\u0027s 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\u0027s signature or recover any private key; it promotes an already-compromised restricted subkey to the primary key\u0027s 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 construction and certificates carrying no key flags subpacket at all are common. Third-party revocations are deliberately outside the rule, since declining to honour one would keep trust alive rather than withdraw it.\u003c/p\u003e"
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      "title": "OpenPGP certification accepted from a subkey without certification authority",
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    "dateReserved": "2026-08-08T00:06:06.982Z",
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}



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Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.

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Nomenclature

  • Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
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Related by attack behaviour

Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.


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