CWE-299: Improper Check for Certificate Revocation
BaseLikelihood of exploit: Medium
The product does not check or incorrectly checks the revocation status of a certificate, which may cause it to use a certificate that has been compromised.
An improper check for certificate revocation is a far more serious flaw than related certificate failures. This is because the use of any revoked certificate is almost certainly malicious. The most common reason for certificate revocation is compromise of the system in question, with the result that no legitimate servers will be using a revoked certificate, unless they are sorely out of sync.
Consequences
- Access Control: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity
- Integrity, Other: Other
- Confidentiality: Read Application Data
How to prevent it
- Architecture and Design: Ensure that certificates are checked for revoked status.
- Implementation: If certificate pinning is being used, ensure that all relevant properties of the certificate are fully validated before the certificate is pinned, including the revoked status.
Recent advisories
- GHSA-jr5w-w6x2-84p9 — Electron: Mitigation for compromised eMudhra intermediate certificates
- RUSTSEC-2026-0382 — Distrust compromised intermediate certificates in crypto/x509
- GHSA-pwjx-qhcg-rvj4 — webpki: CRLs not considered authoritative by Distribution Point due to faulty matching logic
- GHSA-9f94-5g5w-gf6r — CRL Distribution Point Scope Check Logic Error in AWS-LC
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