Vulnerability HighRUSTSEC-2023-0052 · webpki
RUSTSEC-2023-0052: webpki: CPU denial of service in certificate path building
Short answerA security vulnerability in the webpki crate: webpki: CPU denial of service in certificate path building. High severity (CVSS 7.5). Fixed in 0.22.2: update to a fixed version.
| Crate | webpki |
|---|---|
| Type | Vulnerability (denial-of-service) |
| Affected versions | Before 0.22.2. |
| Fixed in | 0.22.2 |
| Severity | High, CVSS 7.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
| Published | 2023-08-22 |
| Last changed | 2026-02-04 |
| Also known as | GHSA-8qv2-5vq6-g2g7 |
What to do
- See which version you have:
cargo tree -i webpki(it also shows which of your dependencies pulls it in). - Update within your version requirement:
cargo update -p webpki. If the fix is a newer major or minor than your requirement allows, raise it in Cargo.toml (for examplewebpki = "0.22.2") or update the dependency that pulls it in. - Check again with
cargo audit, or paste your Cargo.lock into our Cargo.toml checker.
Details from the advisory
When this crate is given a pathological certificate chain to validate, it will spend CPU time exponential with the number of candidate certificates at each step of path building.
Both TLS clients and TLS servers that accept client certificate are affected.
This was previously reported in <https://github.com/briansmith/webpki/issues/69> and re-reported recently by Luke Malinowski.
webpki 0.22.1 included a partial fix and webpki 0.22.2 added further fixes.
References
- Package: crates.io/crates/webpki
- Advisory: rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2023-0052.html
From the RustSec Advisory Database (CC0-1.0) via the OSV export, downloaded Oct 24, 2026. Severity score computed from the published CVSS vector.
Up next
Same cratewebpki: security historyEvery advisory for this crate, and whether it is safe to use today.Read it next →Did this answer your question?