Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-78124 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-78124 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-78124?
- Low severity, with a CVSS score of 3.7, published 11 September 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- strongSwan 5.0.2 through 6.0.7.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-78124?
- A patch was published on 2026-09-07: Fixed in version 6.1.0 Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-78124 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a hosted service.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-78124?
- Check whether you run strongSwan at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
The openssl plugin in strongSwan contains a memory leak in its PKCS#7/CMS container handling. When enumerating certificates using CMS_get1_certs(), the refcount is increased for the stack and contained X.509 structures, but the enumerator destructor fails to call sk_X509_pop_free() to release that refcount, leading to memory leaks per certificate processed. The vulnerability is reachable pre-authentication via IKEv1 certificate payloads using PKCS#7 wrapped X.509 encoding; attackers can trigger leaks with crafted containers requiring at least two IKEv1 messages. The issue affects strongSwan 5.0.2 through 6.0.7 and is fixed in version 6.1.0.
Affected products
- strongSwan strongSwan 5.0.2 through 6.0.7
Timeline
- 2026-09-07: disclosed
- 2026-09-07: patched: Fixed in version 6.1.0