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CVE-2026-71890: Product identification pending

Severity

8.7 (HIGH)

Vendor

BOUNCY CASTLE FOR JAVA

Affected versions

Before 1.86

Fixed version

1.86

Patch status

Patched

Published

2026-10-03T09:17:05.607

Modified

2026-10-03T09:17:05.607

Why it matters

High-severity vulnerability requiring prioritized review.

Recommended admin actions

• Review and patch based on exposure, asset criticality, and business impact.
• Compare installed versions against the affected version range in the advisory.

Technical summary

In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, validation of an MLS (RFC 9420) external commit's proposal list, org.bouncycastle.mls.protocol.Group.validateExternalCachedProposals, counted the proposals by type and bounded the removed leaf index but never established that the removed leaf had anything to do with the joiner. RFC 9420 sec. 12.2 permits at most one Remove proposal in an external commit, with which the joiner removes an old version of themselves, and requires that where one is present the LeafNode in the commit's path field meet the criteria it would have to meet in an Update for the removed leaf, in particular that its credential present identifiers acceptable for the removed participant. The ordinary proposal-list validator's self-remove rule is deliberately not applied on this path, because a resync commit legitimately removes a leaf the joiner owns, but nothing was put in its place. Any party holding the group's public GroupInfo, which is precisely what an external joiner is meant to be given, could therefore commit a Remove naming any member's LeafIndex and have every member apply it, evicting that member and taking over their slot in the ratchet tree. The credential check that should have prevented this existed only in the gRPC interop harness and so protected no other caller of the public Group.externalJoin and Group.handle API. An external commit carrying a Remove is now accepted only when the removed leaf's credential is identical to the one in the joiner's own new leaf, on both the sending and the receiving side.

View the official NVD record for CVE-2026-71890

CVE data is sourced from NVD/CNA records and optional enrichment. Validate against the vendor advisory before taking production action.