CVE-2022-23491 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.8) vulnerability in certifi. A fix is available for certifi — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Removal of TrustCor root certificate
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-23491.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2022-23491 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,415 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
certifiReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Certifi is a curated collection of Root Certificates for validating the trustworthiness of SSL certificates while verifying the identity of TLS hosts. Certifi 2022.12.07 removes root certificates from "TrustCor" from the root store. These are in the process of being removed from Mozilla's trust store. TrustCor's root certificates are being removed pursuant to an investigation prompted by media reporting that TrustCor's ownership also operated a business that produced spyware. Conclusions of Mozilla's investigation can be found in the linked google group discussion.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | certifi | ≥ 2017.11.05&&< 2022.12.07 | 2022.12.07pip install --upgrade 'certifi==2022.12.07' |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for certifi, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update certifi to 2022.12.07 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-23491 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Satellite is not vulnerable to this flaw as it ships a build of python-certifi that is patched to use system certs from /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt.Redhat has rated this CVE as moderate because most redhat products use system-wide root CA certificate bundle instead of certifi bundle.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.3 for RHEL 8 | python3x-certifi-0:2022.12.7-1.el8ap | RHBA-2023:0589 |
| Red Hat Ceph Storage 8.1 | ceph-2:19.2.1-222.el9cp | RHSA-2025:9775 |
| Red Hat Ceph Storage 8.1 | rhceph/grafana-rhel9:11.5.2-6 | RHSA-2025:9776 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-23491 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.