picotls has infinite recursion in the minicrypto ASN.1 decoder (CVE-2026-45271) | HOL Guard CVE

Unknown severity · Source severity not reportedCVE-2026-45271

picotls has infinite recursion in the minicrypto ASN.1 decoder

Answer in brief

CVE-2026-45271 records a Unknown severity vulnerability in picotls has infinite recursion in the minicrypto ASN.1 decoder. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. The current feed maps h2o/picotls (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.

Analysis pending evidence review

HOL Guard separates source facts from reviewed analysis. See the methodology.

Published Aug 21, 2026Updated Aug 21, 2026Source checked Aug 21, 2026First seen by HOL Aug 21, 2026Material review Aug 21, 2026

Upstream Advisory

Key facts

Risk: Unknown severitySource severity not reported
Exploitation: Not marked as known exploited
Affected software: 1 mapped package or product
Fix availability: Not reported

Why this deserves its current priority

A CVSS score is not reported in the current record. 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 h2o/picotls (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.

Mapped affected packages and fixed versions
Package	Affected range	Fixed version
h2o/picotlsgeneric	< c14231d801407640bc42c2dcf92783409ea6a7c7	Not reported

Recommended response

Check inventory. Check lockfiles and deployed manifests for h2o/picotls.
Review the reported fix. Monitor this advisory for an available fix and review any installs of the affected package.

Evidence timeline and material changes

Published upstream
Aug 21, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:record
Source modified
Aug 21, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:record
First seen by HOL
Aug 21, 2026

Sources and claim methodology

Upstream source description

Picotls is a TLS protocol library that allows users select different crypto backends based on their use case. Picotls implements its own ASN.1 validation helper, which is used by the minicrypto backend while parsing local PKCS#8 private keys. Prior to commit c14231d801407640bc42c2dcf92783409ea6a7c7, the validator recursively descends into constructed ASN.1 elements without enforcing a maximum nesting depth. If an application loads an attacker-supplied private-key file through ptls_minicrypto_load_private_key(), or otherwise calls the public ASN.1 validation API on untrusted DER, a crafted deeply nested ASN.1 structure can exhaust the process stack and crash the application. Note that the libcrypto (OpenSSL) backend does not use the ASN.1 validation helper of picotls, and therefore is immune to this vulnerability. The vulnerability has been addressed in commit c14231d801407640bc42c2dcf92783409ea6a7c7.

Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.