Answer in brief
CVE-2026-14957 records a High severity (CVSS 7.5) vulnerability in FIPS mode assertion failure via malicious CERT payload. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. The current feed maps The Libreswan Project/libreswan (generic), The Libreswan Project/libreswan (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
Analysis pending evidence review
HOL Guard separates source facts from reviewed analysis. See the methodology.
CVSS is 7.5. 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.
The current feed maps The Libreswan Project/libreswan (generic), The Libreswan Project/libreswan (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
| Package | Affected range | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| The Libreswan Project/libreswangeneric | 3.0 | Not reported |
| The Libreswan Project/libreswangeneric | >=3.0 <=5.3.1 | Not reported |
Published upstream
Sep 2, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordSource modified
Sep 9, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordFirst seen by HOL
Sep 2, 2026
In FIPS mode, Libreswan's add_decoded_cert() function calls CERT_ExtractPublicKey() and asserts that the result is not NULL. However, CERT_ExtractPublicKey() returns NULL when public key extraction fails, for example if the RSA exponent is set to 0. A remote attacker can send a malformed X.509 certificate in a CERT payload to trigger the assertion, causing the pluto daemon to abort and restart. Continued exploitation causes a denial of service. No remote code execution is possible. Both IKEv1 and IKEv2 are affected. The vulnerability is only exploitable when both the OS and libreswan are running in FIPS mode and at least one CA certificate is loaded. The CERT payload is processed before peer authentication, so no credentials are needed to exploit this. Configurations using only PreSharedKey (PSK) authentication with no CA certificates loaded in the NSS database are not vulnerable.
Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.