Vulnerability record · CVE-2026-39984 · published 15 April 2026
CVE-2026-39984: Linuxfoundation sigstore timestamp authority improper certificate validation vulnerability
Linuxfoundation · Sigstore Timestamp Authority
Sigstore Timestamp Authority is a service for issuing RFC 3161 timestamps. Versions 2.0.5 and below contain an authorization bypass vulnerability in the VerifyTimestampResponse function. VerifyTimestampResponse correctly verifies the certificate chain signature, but the TSA-specific constraint checks in VerifyLeafCert uses the first non-CA certificate from the PKCS#7 certificate bag instead of the leaf certificate from the verified chain. An attacker can exploit this by prepending a forged certificate to the certificate bag while the message is signed with an authorized key, causing the library to validate the signature against one certificate but perform authorization checks against another. This vulnerability only affects users of the timestamp-authority/v2/pkg/verification package and does not affect the timestamp-authority service itself or sigstore-go. The issue has been fixed in version 2.0.6.
Description
Sigstore Timestamp Authority is a service for issuing RFC 3161 timestamps. Versions 2.0.5 and below contain an authorization bypass vulnerability in the VerifyTimestampResponse function. VerifyTimestampResponse correctly verifies the certificate chain signature, but the TSA-specific constraint checks in VerifyLeafCert uses the first non-CA certificate from the PKCS#7 certificate bag instead of the leaf certificate from the verified chain. An attacker can exploit this by prepending a forged certificate to the certificate bag while the message is signed with an authorized key, causing the library to validate the signature against one certificate but perform authorization checks against another. This vulnerability only affects users of the timestamp-authority/v2/pkg/verification package and does not affect the timestamp-authority service itself or sigstore-go. The issue has been fixed in version 2.0.6.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Affected products
1 vulnerable configurations from NVD's CPE data, grouped by vendor and product.
References
| Link | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://github.com/sigstore/timestamp-authority/releases/tag/v2.0.6 | ProductRelease Notes |
| https://github.com/sigstore/timestamp-authority/security/advisories/GHSA-xm5m-wgh2-rrg3 | MitigationVendor Advisory |
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Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2026-39984), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-26). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.