CVE-2026-24122VulnerabilityPublished 19 Feb 2026

CVE-2026-24122: sigstore cosign · Improper Certificate Validation

Affects sigstore cosignSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 3.7 Medium : upgrade to 3.0.5 when convenient.

Data as of 25 Oct 2026, 19:02 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

3.7Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 11% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 3.0.5

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: High
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: Low
Availability: None

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: High: A successful attack depends on conditions beyond the attacker's control. That is, a successful attack cannot be accomplished at will, but requires the attacker to invest in some measurable amount of effort in preparation or execution against the vulnerable component before a successful attack can be expected. For example, a successful attack may require an attacker to: gather knowledge about the environment in which the vulnerable target/component exists; prepare the target environment to improve exploit reliability; or inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim in order to read and/or modify network communications (e.g., a man in the middle attack).
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact on the impacted component.
Availability: None: There is no impact to availability within the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 19 Feb 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 2026-10-25.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade sigstore cosign to 3.0.5.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
sigstorecosign	Affected <3.0.5	Fixed in 3.0.5

AI-suggested

Organizations using cosign in private deployments with customized PKIs should upgrade to version 3.0.5 or later immediately to ensure proper certificate expiration validation. Additionally, private PKI administrators should audit their certificate issuance and expiration policies to ensure issuing certificates do not expire before leaf certificates. Implement strict certificate lifecycle management and monitoring to detect and revoke expired or invalid certificates promptly. Employ additional verification layers such as external timestamp authorities or transparency logs to cross-validate certificate validity periods. Regularly review and test the signature verification process in private environments to detect anomalies related to certificate validation. Consider isolating private PKI environments and restricting access to certificate issuance to reduce the risk of malicious certificate creation. Finally, maintain awareness of updates from the sigstore project and apply security patches promptly.

Description

Cosign provides code signing and transparency for containers and binaries. In versions 3.0.4 and below, an issuing certificate with a validity that expires before the leaf certificate will be considered valid during verification even if the provided timestamp would mean the issuing certificate should be considered expired. When verifying artifact signatures using a certificate, Cosign first verifies the certificate chain using the leaf certificate's "not before" timestamp and later checks expiry of the leaf certificate using either a signed timestamp provided by the Rekor transparency log or from a timestamp authority, or using the current time. The root and all issuing certificates are assumed to be valid during the leaf certificate's validity. There is no impact to users of the public Sigstore infrastructure. This may affect private deployments with customized PKIs. This issue has been fixed in version 3.0.5.

Impact

The primary impact of this vulnerability is the potential for attackers to exploit the acceptance of expired issuing certificates in private cosign deployments, which could allow them to forge or reuse artifact signatures that should otherwise be considered invalid. This undermines the integrity of the software supply chain by allowing potentially malicious or outdated artifacts to be trusted erroneously. While the vulnerability does not affect the public Sigstore infrastructure, organizations running private PKI environments with cosign may face risks of signature spoofing or bypassing revocation checks. This could lead to the deployment of unauthorized or tampered container images or binaries, increasing the risk of supply chain attacks, malware distribution, or unauthorized code execution. However, the attack complexity is high, and exploitation requires control or compromise of the certificate issuance process or the ability to present expired issuing certificates. The confidentiality and availability of systems are not directly impacted, limiting the overall severity. Organizations relying heavily on private cosign deployments for critical software signing and verification processes are the most at risk.

CWE-295Improper Certificate Validation (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessOWASP Top 10 A07:2025: Authentication Failures (opens in a new tab)
The product does not validate, or incorrectly validates, a certificate.
Architecture and Design · Implementation
Certificates should be carefully managed and checked to assure that data are encrypted with the intended owner's public key.
Implementation
If certificate pinning is being used, ensure that all relevant properties of the certificate are fully validated before the certificate is pinned, including the hostname.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Transport Layer Protection (opens in a new tab)
TLS Cipher String (opens in a new tab)
OWASP Authentication (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V9.2.1 (opens in a new tab)
V1.9.2 (opens in a new tab)
V2.8.5 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Creating a Rogue Certification Authority Certificate (opens in a new tab)
Signature Spoofing by Improper Validation (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 28 Feb 2026, 14:45 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-295

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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