Vulnerability record · CVE-2016-7053 · published 4 May 2017
CVE-2016-7053: Openssl null pointer dereference vulnerability
OOpenssl · Openssl
In OpenSSL 1.1.0 before 1.1.0c, applications parsing invalid CMS structures can crash with a NULL pointer dereference. This is caused by a bug in the handling of the ASN.1 CHOICE type in OpenSSL 1.1.0 which can result in a NULL value being passed to the structure callback if an attempt is made to free certain invalid encodings. Only CHOICE structures using a callback which do not handle NULL value are affected.
Description
In OpenSSL 1.1.0 before 1.1.0c, applications parsing invalid CMS structures can crash with a NULL pointer dereference. This is caused by a bug in the handling of the ASN.1 CHOICE type in OpenSSL 1.1.0 which can result in a NULL value being passed to the structure callback if an attempt is made to free certain invalid encodings. Only CHOICE structures using a callback which do not handle NULL value are affected.
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Affected products
1 vulnerable configurations from NVD's CPE data, grouped by vendor and product.
References
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Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2016-7053), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-26). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.