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CVE-2026-40097

LOW CVSS 3.1: 3.7 EPSS 0.04%
Updated Apr 10, 2026
Step
Parameter Value
CVSS 3.7 (LOW)
Affected Versions before 0.30.0
Fixed In 0.30.0
Type CWE-129 (Improper Validation of Array Index)
Vendor Step
Public PoC No

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 in 0.30.0-rc3.

Attack Parameters

Attack Vector
Network
Can be exploited remotely
Attack Complexity
High
Difficult to exploit
Privileges Required
None
No privileges needed
User Interaction
None
No user interaction needed

Impact Assessment

Confidentiality
None
No data leak
Integrity
None
No data modification
Availability
Low
Partial disruption

CVSS Vector v3.1