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pyasn1 parsing bugs can exhaust CPU when decoding ASN.1

Original title: USN-9011-1: pyasn1 vulnerabilities

Ubuntu Security Notices ()1
AI summary · x-ai/grok-4.7Summaries by Vani AI

CVE-2026-59884 affects only Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 18.04, and 20.04 LTS.

Ubuntu said pyasn1 did not bound long-form tag identifiers when parsing BER, CER, or DER data, so decoding untrusted ASN.1 could consume excessive CPU and cause a denial of service. That issue, CVE-2026-59884, affects only four older Ubuntu LTS releases. A second flaw processes OBJECT IDENTIFIER and RELATIVE-OID values in quadratic time relative to the number of arcs, also risking CPU exhaustion. The snippet ends before any fix.

Unconfirmed: The snippet ends before a CVE id or fixed version for the OID issue.

Key facts
  • CVE-2026-59884 involves unbounded long-form tag identifiers in BER, CER, or DER.
  • The OID flaw grows with the number of arcs and can exhaust CPU.
  • No fixed package version appears in the truncated notice.
Security assessment · AI, from the article

Impact: denial of service through excessive CPU use

ProductAffected
Ubuntu pyasn1Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, and 20.04 LTS for CVE-2026-59884
What to do
  1. 1.Install Ubuntu's pyasn1 security updates for affected releases when available.
Analyze CVE-2026-59884 with Vani AIImpact, affected versions, exploitation, mitigations and detection

Vulnerabilities mentioned

All
CVEVulnerabilityCVSSEPSSSignalsPublished
CVE-2026-59884
pyasn1 is a generic ASN.1 library for Python
7.5<1%

From the original article

It was discovered that pyasn1 did not properly bound the size of long-form tag identifiers when parsing BER, CER, or DER encoded data. An attacker could possibly use this issue to cause applications decoding untrusted ASN. 1 data to consume excessive CPU resources, resulting in a denial of service.

Ubuntu Security Notices

ubuntu.com

Read the full article at Ubuntu Security Notices

A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.