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CVE-2026-55962· NVD / CVE Program· CNA wolfSSL

TLS 1.3 post-handshake authentication: server accepts Finished without client Certificate/CertificateVerify

TLS 1.3 post-handshake authentication (PHA) issue where a server could accept a client's Finished message without the client having sent a Certificate and CertificateVerify. The post-handshake-auth exemption that allows an empty/absent peer certificate was only intended for the initial handshake, but it was also being applied while a post-handshake CertificateRequest was still outstanding. The check is now scoped to the initial handshake only: on the server, once a post-handshake CertificateRequest has been sent (certReqCtx is set), a peer certificate and a valid CertificateVerify are required again before the Finished is accepted, with empty-certificate handling following the configured verify mode (FAIL_IF_NO_PEER_CERT) just as during first-handshake client authentication. Only affects TLS 1.3 servers built with post-handshake authentication support (WOLFSSL_POST_HANDSHAKE_AUTH / --enable-postauth, included in --enable-all) that enable WOLFSSL_VERIFY_POST_HANDSHAKE and request a client certificate after the handshake via wolfSSL_request_certificate(). Clients, and servers that do not use post-handshake authentication, are unaffected.

MediumCVSS 6.0 · v4.0—No exploit Fix available
Published
Jun 25, 2026
Updated
Jun 27, 2026
EPSS
0.2% · 13th percentile
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Report tools

JSON

Action score

24

Monitor

Low priority for now.

CVSS
24 / 40 · 6.0 / 10
CISA KEV
0 / 30 · Not listed
EPSS
0 / 30 · 0.2%

CISA SSVC decision

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial

Vulnrichment: CISA's decision-tree inputs.

CNA vs NVD score

NVD
—
CNA · wolfSSL
6.0
NVD has not scored this yet; the score shown is the CNA’s.

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

The score given by the assigning authority versus NVD’s independent score. A gap means the severity is contested.

Affected systems

VendorProduct
wolfsslwolfssl

Affected versions

NVD version ranges (for catalog products). Add the product to your stack with a version and matching uses these.

  • wolfssl wolfssl5.5.4 and later · before 5.9.2

Versions reported by the vendor

Affected version ranges reported by the assigning authority (wolfSSL). Independent of NVD's CPE analysis and usually ahead of it.

  • wolfSSL wolfSSL

    • 5.5.4 and later · up to and including 5.9.1affected · semver

Package-level exposure

OSV and GitHub Advisory data: ecosystem, package and range. SBOM matching uses this table.

EcosystemPackageAffected rangeFix
Debian:12wolfsslbefore 5.5.4-2+deb12u35.5.4-2+deb12u3
Debian:13wolfsslbefore 5.7.2-0.1+deb13u25.7.2-0.1+deb13u2

Same product

wolfssl: all records

Other highest-scoring records for the same primary product.

  • CVE-2019-11873wolfSSL 4.0.0 has a Buffer Overflow in DoPreSharedKeys in tls13.c when a current identity size is greater than a client identity size.
    42Plan
  • CVE-2017-2800A specially crafted x509 certificate can cause a single out of bounds byte overwrite in wolfSSL through 3.10.2 resulting in potential certif
    42Plan
  • CVE-2024-5991Buffer overread in domain name matching
    40Plan
  • CVE-2020-36177RsaPad_PSS in wolfcrypt/src/rsa.c in wolfSSL before 4.6.0 has an out-of-bounds write for certain relationships between key size and digest s
    40Plan
  • CVE-2014-2898wolfSSL CyaSSL before 2.9.4 allows remote attackers to have unspecified impact via multiple calls to the CyaSSL_read function which triggers
    40Plan
  • CVE-2014-2897The SSL 3 HMAC functionality in wolfSSL CyaSSL 2.5.0 before 2.9.4 does not check the padding length when verification fails, which allows re
    40Plan

Remediation

Which version to upgrade to

Fix versions compiled from the vendor, package registries and Microsoft. Verify the vendor's note before upgrading.

Product / packageFixed versionSource
debian:wolfssl5.5.4-2+deb12u3 · Debian:12Package registry (OSV)

Exploit status

No known public exploit

No public exploit has been observed yet. That doesn't mean you're safe, only that the bar is a little higher.

Research context

For pentesters and researchers: attack profile, score disagreement, timeline, patch commits, credits, variant and chain candidates, bug bounty scope. All derived from existing data; no exploit code.

Timeline

From publication to today: proof of concept, Metasploit module, CISA KEV and fix record. Dates are as reported by the sources.

No dated events beyond publication.

EPSS, last 120 days

FIRST EPSS daily score; only changes of 0.01 or more are recorded (step chart).

Patch and commit links

Commit, PR and diff links among the references. A starting point for patch-diffing and variant hunting; fixes, not exploits.

Credits

All researchers

Finders, reporters and analysts named in the CNA record. Click a name for that researcher’s other records.

Variant candidates

Same product, same weakness class, within 18 months. If the patch missed the root cause, the sibling bug is here.

  • CVE-2026-8913694 days apartClient accepts unsolicited RawPublicKey server certificate type
    33Monitor
  • CVE-2026-117030 days apartMissing SNI/ALPN binding on stateful (session-ID) TLS session resumption
    24Monitor
  • CVE-2026-9441994 days apartClient session cache reference poisoning allows resumption with wrong server
    9Monitor

Chain candidates

An authentication bypass and a privilege-requiring bug in the same product, published close together: combined they may become an unauthenticated path.

  • CVE-2026-264698 days apartHeap buffer overflow in session parsing with wolfSSL_d2i_SSL_SESSION() function
    20Monitor
  • CVE-2026-550777 days apartSession Cache Restore — Arbitrary Free via Deserialized Pointer
    16Monitor

Bug bounty scope

No known public program.

Source: bounty-targets-data (public HackerOne, Bugcrowd, Intigriti, YesWeHack listings).

Technical details

Attack conditions

  • Anyone who can reach it over the internet can trigger it.
  • A low-privileged account is enough.
  • No user action is required.
  • No special conditions are required; it is repeatable.

If successful

Confidentiality
Integrity
Availability
Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
X

Weakness class (CWE)

CWE-287 · Improper Authentication

CVSS vector

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

nvd-secondary

Root cause

Authentication is added route by route instead of being enforced in one place. When a route added later bypasses the shared middleware, the session check never runs for it.

The bug in code

The whole CWE-287 class

A representative example of this vulnerability class. Not the vendor's source code; it shows the faulty pattern and its fix.

Vulnerable

ts
app.use("/admin", requireSession, adminRouter);
// Route added later skips the middlewareapp.post("/admin-api/config", updateConfig);

Fixed

ts
const admin = express.Router();admin.use(requireSession, requireRole("admin"));
admin.post("/config", updateConfig);app.use("/admin", admin);

Attack context

MITRE CAPEC attack patterns and ATT&CK techniques for this weakness class (CWE). A starting point for detection rules and threat hunting.

Noroxi analysis

No Noroxi analysis for this record yet

We don't hand-write analysis for all 385,000+ vulnerabilities; that wouldn't be honest. For notable, high-impact vulnerabilities our team writes the mechanism, detection and remediation steps.

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Change log

  1. Fix✗ → ✓

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References

Vendor advisories and official records. Exploit/PoC links are deliberately left out.

All records