{"id":"CVE-2026-71886","title":"In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, the high-level OpenPGP certificate API accepted a third-party certification or trust delegation from any component key of the issuing certificate, without requiring that component to have been grant…","summary":"In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, the high-level OpenPGP certificate API accepted a third-party certification or trust delegation from any component key of the issuing certificate, without requiring that component to have been grant…","severity":"high","cvss":8.2,"cvssVector":"CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/U:Amber","cwe":["CWE-285","CWE-863"],"vendor":"Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc.","product":"bcpg","affected":["bcpg >= 1.81 < 1.86"],"published":"2026-10-03","updated":"2026-10-03","sourceUpdated":"2026-10-03T09:17:04.897","source":"NVD","sourceUrl":"https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-71886","references":[{"url":"https://github.com/bcgit/bc-java/commit/f0d5c8535aeff3f34b7b6b6289ee78c2ea36a3fb","label":"91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630"},{"url":"https://github.com/bcgit/bc-java/wiki/CVE%E2%80%902026%E2%80%9071886","label":"91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630"}],"tags":["nvd","cve.org"],"cvssSource":"cna","ingestedAt":"2026-10-03T09:42:13.787Z","slug":"CVE-2026-71886","body":"## Overview\n\nIn Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, the high-level OpenPGP certificate API accepted a third-party certification or trust delegation from any component key of the issuing certificate, without requiring that component to have been granted the authority to certify. OpenPGPCertificate.getCertificationBy() and getDelegationBy() resolve a third-party signature by matching its issuer key identifier against every key of the third-party certificate, then verify the issuing component's binding chain and the signature itself; nothing checked that the issuing component carried the RFC 9580 sec. 5.2.3.29 certification key flag (CERTIFY_OTHER) when the signature was created. A subkey bound only with SIGN_DATA - the online signing subkey of exactly the offline-primary arrangement those key flags exist to express - could therefore issue a positive User ID certification over an attacker-controlled identity, or a full-trust depth-one direct-key delegation of introducer trust, and the API returned it as a valid signature chain attributed to the third-party certificate. An application treating getCertificationBy(...).isValid() or getDelegationBy(...) as an identity or trusted-introducer decision would attribute the attacker's assertion to the offline primary key. The same held for a legacy RSA subkey bound only for encryption, whose algorithm is nonetheless able to sign. This does not forge the primary key's signature or recover any private key; it promotes an already-compromised restricted subkey to the primary key's identity-issuing authority, defeating the containment the key-flag separation provides. A third-party certification or delegation is now attributed to the issuing certificate only when the component key that made it is the primary key, or is a subkey holding CERTIFY_OTHER when the signature was created, so certification-capable subkeys continue to be accepted; primary keys are accepted whatever their key flags say, since a primary key is certification-capable by construction and certificates carrying no key flags subpacket at all are common. Third-party revocations are deliberately outside the rule, since declining to honour one would keep trust alive rather than withdraw it.\n\n## Remediation\n\nRefer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.","depth":"twilight","depthScore":45,"depthScoreParts":{"impact":45.1,"likelihood":0,"exploitation":0,"ransomware":0},"changes":[]}