CVE-2026-40097
3.7 · LOWOverview
CVE-2026-40097 is a low-severity vulnerability affecting smallstep step-ca. It was published on April 10, 2026 and has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 3.7 (LOW).
This vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 3.7, rated LOW. It can be exploited remotely over the network. No authentication or special privileges are required for exploitation.
Technical Description
Step CA is an online certificate authority for secure, automated certificate management for DevOps. From 0.24.0 to before 0.30.0-rc3, an attacker can trigger an index out-of-bounds panic in Step CA by sending a crafted attestation key (AK) certificate with an empty Extended Key Usage (EKU) extension during TPM device attestation. When processing a device-attest-01 ACME challenge using TPM attestation, Step CA validates that the AK certificate contains the tcg-kp-AIKCertificate Extended Key Usage OID. During this validation, the EKU extension value is decoded from its ASN.1 representation and the first element is checked. A crafted certificate could include an EKU extension that decodes to an empty sequence, causing the code to panic when accessing the first element of the empty slice. This vulnerability is only reachable when a device-attest-01 ACME challenge with TPM attestation is configured. Deployments not using TPM device attestation are not affected. This vulnerability is fixed i
Remediation
Check the references section for vendor advisories and patches from smallstep. Update step-ca to the latest patched version. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.
Affected Products
| Vendor | Product | Versions | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| smallstep | step-ca | >= 0.24.0, < 0.30.0 | Affected |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CVE-2026-40097?
CVE-2026-40097 is a low-severity vulnerability affecting smallstep step-ca. It was published on April 10, 2026 and has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 3.7 (LOW).
How severe is CVE-2026-40097?
This vulnerability has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 3.7, rated LOW. It can be exploited remotely over the network. No authentication or special privileges are required for exploitation.
How do I fix or remediate CVE-2026-40097?
Check the references section for vendor advisories and patches from smallstep. Update step-ca to the latest patched version. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.
How can CyberStrike help with CVE-2026-40097?
CyberStrike's AI-powered security agents can automatically detect CVE-2026-40097 across your infrastructure using autonomous pentesting, DAST scanning, and HackBrowser. The platform continuously monitors for known vulnerabilities and provides actionable remediation guidance prioritized by real-world exploitability.
How CyberStrike Helps
AI agents map your attack surface to find vulnerabilities like this one.
Automated penetration testing that runs continuously, not just quarterly.
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