Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-78130 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-78130 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-78130?
- High severity, with a CVSS score of 7.5, published 11 September 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- strongSwan 4.2.0 through 6.0.7.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-78130?
- A patch was published on 2026-09-07: Fixed in strongSwan 6.1.0 Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-78130 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-78130?
- 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
A NULL pointer dereference exists in the x509 plugin's attribute certificate validation code. Specifically, the issued_by() and has_issuer() methods unconditionally dereference the issuerName field without checking if it is NULL; per ASN.1 specification, this field is optional in attribute certificates. An attacker with network access can craft an attribute certificate with a missing issuerName field and provide it to strongSwan for validation, triggering a crash in the acert plugin's certificate validation flow. The vulnerability requires the x509 and acert plugins to be loaded (x509 is loaded by default). Remote code execution is not possible; the impact is limited to denial of service. The fix is available in strongSwan 6.1.0 released 2026-09-07, with patches available for versions 5.1.3 and newer.
Affected products
- strongSwan strongSwan 4.2.0 through 6.0.7
Timeline
- 2026-09-07: disclosed
- 2026-09-07: patched: Fixed in strongSwan 6.1.0
- 2026-09-11: advisory: CVE-2026-78130 published on NVD