Forge has a basicConstraints bypass in its certificate chain verification (RFC 5280 violation)
21Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 7.4epss 0.3%
exploitation probability
0.3%top 72% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
Forge (also called `node-forge`) is a native implementation of Transport Layer Security in JavaScript. Prior to version 1.4.0, `pki.verifyCertificateChain()` does not enforce RFC 5280 basicConstraints requirements when an intermediate certificate lacks both the `basicConstraints` and `keyUsage` extensions. This allows any leaf certificate (without these extensions) to act as a CA and sign other certificates, which node-forge will accept as valid. Version 1.4.0 patches the issue.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
Affected products
digitalbazaar · forgeReferences
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:13826https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:24761https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:34342https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:9742https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-33896https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2452458https://github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/commit/2e492832fb25227e6b647cbe1ac981c123171e90https://github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/security/advisories/GHSA-2328-f5f3-gj25https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-33896.json