CVE-2026-46597 — x/crypto
HIGHCVE-2026-46597 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-704 vulnerability in golang.org/x/crypto. A fix is available for golang.org/x/crypto — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Invoking byte arithmetic causes underflow and panic in golang.org/x/crypto/ssh
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- 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-2026-46597.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-46597 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 389,824 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
golang.org/x/cryptoReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
An incorrectly placed cast from bytes to int allowed for server-side panic in the AES-GCM packet decoder for well-crafted inputs.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | golang.org/x/crypto | all versions | 0.52.0go get golang.org/x/crypto@v0.52.0 |
Affected Products
cryptogolangDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for golang.org/x/crypto, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update golang.org/x/crypto to 0.52.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-46597 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.
This Important denial of service flaw in `golang.org/x/crypto/ssh` allows a remote attacker to trigger a server-side panic by sending specially crafted inputs to the AES-GCM packet decoder. This vulnerability could lead to service unavailability in Red Hat products that incorporate and expose SSH services built with…
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-46597 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.6 Extended Update Support | podman-5:5.4.0-22.el9_6.5 | RHSA-2026:67450 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.22 | openshift-0:4.22.0-202608010430.p2.g5f1e0e7.assembly.stream.el8 | RHSA-2026:51036 |
| RHEM 1.1 for RHEL 10 | flightctl-0:1.1.4-1.el10em | RHSA-2026:68334 |
| Cert Manager support for Red Hat OpenShift release 1.19 | cert-manager/jetstack-cert-manager-acmesolver-rhel9:1786613805 | RHSA-2026:54531 |
| Cluster Observability Operator 1.5.3 | cluster-observability-operator/cluster-observability-rhel9-operator:1787593637 | RHSA-2026:61314 |
| Logging Subsystem for Red Hat OpenShift 6.5 | openshift-logging/cluster-logging-rhel9-operator:1789659166 | RHSA-2026:70870 |
| Logging Subsystem for Red Hat OpenShift 6.6 | openshift-logging/cluster-logging-rhel9-operator:1788439505 | RHSA-2026:66521 |
| multicluster engine for Kubernetes 2.10 | multicluster-engine/hypershift-addon-rhel9-operator:1786548381 | RHSA-2026:54432 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-46597 in your dependencies?
Find it across Go, including transitive dependencies.