Null pointer dereference in PKCS12 parsing (CVE-2024-0727)

Why this deserves its current priority

CVSS is 5.5. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. Treat this as a source-backed prioritization signal, not a statement about your environment.

Analysis status

Analysis pending evidence review

Factual feed record only; HOL analysis is not approved for indexing. Read the methodology.

Affected scope and exposure questions

The current feed maps cryptography (pypi). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.

Mapped affected packages and fixed versions
Package	Affected range	Fixed version
cryptographypypi	>=0 <42.0.2	42.0.2

Recommended response

Check inventory. Check lockfiles and deployed manifests for cryptography.
Review the reported fix. Update cryptography to 42.0.2 if you use the affected versions. Test the change in a non-production environment first.

Evidence timeline and material changes

Published upstream
Jan 26, 2024
Evidence: source:osv:source_dates:source-dates:record
Source modified
Sep 10, 2026
Evidence: source:osv:source_dates:source-dates:record
First seen by HOL
Sep 10, 2026

Sources and claim methodology

Upstream source description

Issue summary: Processing a maliciously formatted PKCS12 file may lead OpenSSL to crash leading to a potential Denial of Service attack Impact summary: Applications loading files in the PKCS12 format from untrusted sources might terminate abruptly. A file in PKCS12 format can contain certificates and keys and may come from an untrusted source. The PKCS12 specification allows certain fields to be NULL, but OpenSSL does not correctly check for this case. This can lead to a NULL pointer dereference that results in OpenSSL crashing. If an application processes PKCS12 files from an untrusted source using the OpenSSL APIs then that application will be vulnerable to this issue. OpenSSL APIs that are vulnerable to this are: PKCS12_parse(), PKCS12_unpack_p7data(), PKCS12_unpack_p7encdata(), PKCS12_unpack_authsafes() and PKCS12_newpass(). We have also fixed a similar issue in SMIME_write_PKCS7(). However since this function is related to writing data we do not consider it security significant. The FIPS modules in 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue.

Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.