CVE-2026-81721: Jahlives OpenSSL Encrypt

High severity, CVSS 7.5. EPSS: 0.6% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

openssl_encrypt before 1.4.9 fails to validate KDF cost parameters in encrypted file metadata and keystore headers, allowing attackers to trigger unbounded memory allocation. Attackers can craft malicious encrypted files declaring arbitrarily large Argon2, scrypt, or balloon KDF parameters to exhaust system memory and crash the process without authentication.

Affected products

• Jahlives OpenSSL Encrypt: before 1.4.9 (fixed in 1.4.9)

Published 2026-08-27. Last modified 2026-09-02.