CVE-2026-39984 | Sigstore Timestamp Authority has Improper Certificate Validation in verifier

Sigstore Timestamp Authority is a service for issuing RFC 3161 timestamps. Versions 2.0.5 and below contain an authorization bypass vulnerability in the VerifyTimestampResponse function. VerifyTimestampResponse correctly verifies the certificate chain signature, but the TSA-specific constraint checks in VerifyLeafCert uses the first non-CA certificate from the PKCS#7 certificate bag instead of the leaf certificate from the verified chain. An attacker can exploit this by prepending a forged certificate to the certificate bag while the message is signed with an authorized key, causing the library to validate the signature against one certificate but perform authorization checks against another. This vulnerability only affects users of the timestamp-authority/v2/pkg/verification package and does not affect the timestamp-authority service itself or sigstore-go. The issue has been fixed in version 2.0.6.

Published: 2026-04-15 Last update: 2026-06-17 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2026-39984 is rated Low Risk (22.5/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.10%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2026-39984

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 0.01% 0.10% +0.09%
2 2026-04-15 0.01%

Full EPSS history (2 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2026-39984

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
1.8 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2026-39984

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2026-39984

GHSA-xm5m-wgh2-rrg3 · Severity: medium · Ecosystem: go — Sigstore Timestamp Authority has Improper Certificate Validation in verifier

OS Trackers for CVE-2026-39984

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2026-39984 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (golang-github-sigstore-timestamp-authority), 3 status rows across 3 suites (forky, sid, trixie): resolved 2, open 1. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-39984
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-39984
suse medium CVE-2026-39984 severity moderate: SUSE including 8 source package names (docker, docker-bash-completion, …), 89 product×package rows across 26 product lines (SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS, SUSE Linux Enterprise High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS, … (26 product lines)): Known Not Affected 89. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-39984/
ubuntu medium CVE-2026-39984 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (golang-github-sigstore-timestamp-authority), 5 status rows across 5 suites (jammy, noble, questing, resolute, upstream): needs-triage 3, DNE 2. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-39984

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2026-39984

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
linuxfoundation sigstore_timestamp_authority < 2.0.6 cpe:2.3:a:linuxfoundation:sigstore_timestamp_authority:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2026-39984

cvelogic Threat Intelligence