Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:LCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2026-23831 is a medium-severity NULL Pointer Dereference (CWE-476) vulnerability in Linuxfoundation Rekor. Its CVSS base score is 5.3 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 33th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-3809
Vulnerability Data
Rekor is a software supply chain transparency log. In versions 1.4.3 and below, the entry implementation can panic on attacker-controlled input when canonicalizing a proposed entry with an empty spec.message, causing nil Pointer Dereference. Function validate() returns nil (success) when…
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message is empty, leaving sign1Msg uninitialized, and Canonicalize() later dereferences v.sign1Msg.Payload. A malformed proposed entry of the cose/v0.0.1 type can cause a panic on a thread within the Rekor process. The thread is recovered so the client receives a 500 error message and service still continues, so the availability impact of this is minimal. This issue has been fixed in version 1.5.0.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation (including static analysis) directly finds null-dereference bugs before deployment.
Documented development standards and tools can enforce null-safety rules and safe pointer usage.
Engineering principles can mandate defensive coding such as explicit null checks before dereference.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC practices (static analysis, code review, safe coding standards) directly prevent NULL dereference bugs during development.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing can detect NULL dereference defects before release.
Secure SDLC mandates defensive coding practices that can prevent NULL dereferences.
Application security requirements can specify input validation and pointer-safety rules.
Secure architecture principles encourage defensive design that avoids unsafe pointer use.
Secure coding standards directly require NULL-pointer checks and safe dereference patterns.