All vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-115693

Custom cacerts or cacertfile do not restrict trust to the pinned CA in hackney

benoitc hackney
CVSS
9.1Critical
ExploitationNo known exploitationNot in CISA KEV, which does not prove it is unexploitedCISA KEV
Exploit odds (EPSS)No scoreNo FIRST EPSS score in this snapshot yet
Fixed in4.9.0Also 915eb5737e9c489d8fc22eec8cdae30e9b027be4CVE List
Published26 Oct 2026Updated 26 Oct 2026CVE List

What fixes it

A fixed version on one release line is not the upgrade target for every line. Check your exact version and any vendor backports.

Description

Improper Certificate Validation vulnerability in hackney_ssl in benoitc hackney allows an on-path attacker to impersonate a server pinned to a private certificate authority via a certificate chain that ends in a publicly trusted root. hackney adds {partial_chain, fun hackney_ssl:partial_chain/1} to every verify_peer configuration. The callback returns any certificate in the peer chain whose public key matches a root in the bundled certifi store as the trust anchor, and OTP honours that callback over the configured cacerts. hackney_ssl:merge_ssl_opts/3 kept the callback when the caller replaced the trust store with cacerts or cacertfile in ssl_options, so a connection pinned to a private CA still accepted any chain that carried a publicly trusted root.

The hostname check still applies, so the attacker needs a publicly trusted certificate for the pinned hostname.

This issue affects hackney: from 1.24.0 before 4.9.0.

Text from CVE List

Affected versions 2

  • hackneyaffected: 1.24.0 before 4.9.0CVE List
  • hackneyaffected: d8a9afcf5c3849904274e2eba1df56c63d1a1a0c before 915eb5737e9c489d8fc22eec8cdae30e9b027be4CVE List

References 6