A coordinated security update released earlier this month fixed 12 previously unknown vulnerabilities in OpenSSL, the open-source cryptographic library that underpins a large share of the world’s secure communications.
The issues were uncovered by AISLE and disclosed through a coordinated process with the OpenSSL project.
OpenSSL is one of the most scrutinized codebases in existence. Even a single accepted vulnerability is considered rare due to decades of review by maintainers and external researchers.
Several of the newly addressed flaws had existed in the code for years, with some dating back to 1998, highlighting both the maturity of the library and the difficulty of identifying subtle defects.
Multiple High and Low Severity Flaws
In a new advisory published on Tuesday, AISLE revealed it began autonomously analyzing OpenSSL in August 2025, building on earlier disclosures made later that year.
The January 2026 release consolidated all remaining findings into a single coordinated update. The vulnerabilities spanned more than eight subsystems, ranging from cryptographic message syntax to newer components such as QUIC and post-quantum signature handling.
The release included issues of varying severity, including a high-severity stack buffer overflow in CMS AuthEnvelopedData parsing that could enable remote code execution (RCE) under specific conditions.
A moderate-severity flaw affecting PKCS#12 parameter validation was also resolved.
The remaining issues were classified as low severity and largely involved crashes, memory corruption, encryption edge cases or resource exhaustion.
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AISLE also recommended remediation steps, with fixes for five of the 12 vulnerabilities incorporated directly into OpenSSL’s code.
Collaboration and Broader Impact
According to Tomáš Mráz, chief technical officer (CTO) of the OpenSSL Foundation, independent research remains central to the project’s security.
“This release is fixing 12 security issues, all disclosed to us by AISLE,” he said.
“We appreciate the high quality of the reports and their constructive collaboration with us throughout the remediation.”
Beyond the published CVEs, AISLE identified six additional issues that were resolved before appearing in any OpenSSL release. These fixes were merged during development, preventing vulnerable code from reaching users.
AISLE explained how the findings highlight the limits of manual review and traditional static analysis in large, long-lived codebases.
Autonomous analysis can continuously examine edge cases and complex logic paths at scale, while still relying on maintainers’ expertise to validate results and implement robust fixes.
“Keeping widely deployed cryptography secure requires tight coordination between maintainers and researchers,” said Matt Caswell, executive director of the OpenSSL Foundation.
“We appreciate AISLE’s responsible disclosures and the quality of their engagement across these issues.”
