CVE-2026-94418
HighCVSS 7.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk1th percentile - higher than 1% of all known CVEs
Summary
A vulnerability in wolfSSL when WOLFSSL_SMALL_CERT_VERIFY is enabled allows an attacker to bypass certificate signature verification. Due to incorrect result merging, parse errors hide invalid signatures, and date/constraint checks are performed before signature confirmation. An attacker can use a self-signed certificate with arbitrary signature bytes to pass verification if the application uses a callback that overrides date errors.
Risk Assessment
The risk is that an attacker without real PKI keys can impersonate a trusted certificate, potentially leading to unauthorized access or man-in-the-middle attacks. The vulnerability affects only configurations with WOLFSSL_SMALL_CERT_VERIFY and a permissive callback, but in such configurations it can be exploited remotely.
Recommendation
Disable WOLFSSL_SMALL_CERT_VERIFY or update wolfSSL to a patched version. If updating is not possible, avoid using verification callbacks that return 1 for date errors, and consider restarting the context or process after detecting suspicious certificates.
Other vulnerabilities in wolfSSL
See all- CVE-2017-13099High
wolfSSL versions prior to 3.12.2 provide a weak Bleichenbacher oracle when any TLS cipher suite using RSA key exchange is negotiated. An attacker can recover the private key from a vulnerable wolfSSL application.
- CVE-2017-8855High
wolfSSL versions before 3.11.0 do not prevent wc_DhAgree from accepting a malformed DH key.
- CVE-2017-8854High
wolfSSL versions before 3.10.2 have an out-of-bounds memory access issue when loading crafted DH parameters, leading to a buffer overflow triggered by a malformed temporary DH file.
- CVE-2015-6925High
wolfSSL versions (formerly CyaSSL) before 3.6.8 are vulnerable to a denial of service attack that can be triggered by a crafted DTLS cookie in a ClientHello message.
- CVE-2026-89134Critical
A certificate with no dNSName SAN but another SAN type present bypassed the Subject CN dNSName name-constraint check. This incomplete fix from CVE-2026-6731 was introduced in wolfSSL version 5.9.2.
- CVE-2023-3724Critical
CVE-2023-3724 affects TLS 1.3 clients that do not receive a PSK or KSE extension when connecting to a malicious server. In this case, a default predictable buffer is used for the IKM value, which may lead to session key compromise.
- CVE-2017-2800Critical
A specially crafted x509 certificate can cause a single out of bounds byte overwrite in wolfSSL through 3.10.2 resulting in potential certificate validation vulnerabilities, denial of service and possible remote code execution.
- CVE-2026-95208High
An issue in the ConfirmNameConstraints() function (wolfcrypt/src/asn.c) of wolfSSL v5.9.1 and v5.9.2 allows attackers to cause a Denial of Service (DoS) via providing crafted Certificate Authority certificates, leading to valid certificates without SAN to be incorrectly rejected by wolfSSL-based TLS clients.
- CVE-2026-94417Medium
A vulnerability in wolfSSL causes CRL checking to be skipped for certificates without an OCSP URL when both OCSP and CRL revocation checking are enabled. As a result, a certificate revoked by CRL may be accepted, and a missing OCSP responder is treated as a positive response. The issue affects versions up to 5.9.2 and is reachable over TLS 1.0-1.3 and DTLS.
- CVE-2026-93304Low
A (D)TLS 1.2 client can accept a ChangeCipherSpec message before sending its ClientKeyExchange, allowing an attacker to complete the handshake in place of the server and send data the client accepts as authentic. DTLS 1.2 clients are exposed via datagram reads, and TLS 1.2 clients when using wolfSSL_inject() or read ahead.
Original NVD description (English source)
Under WOLFSSL_SMALL_CERT_VERIFY, ProcessPeerCertParse() runs the certificate signature check separately from the parse to keep peak memory down, then merges the two results, but it merged the signature result back only when the parse returned 0, so any parse error hid it. ParseCertRelative() reaches its validity-date, name-constraint and critical-extension checks only after ConfirmSignature() has passed, so splitting the signature check out inverts the precedence that makes "override date errors" a sound policy, and ASN_SIG_CONFIRM_E is never surfaced anywhere. The attacker needs no key material from the real PKI and no CA compromise: a self-made certificate carrying the expected subject name, the trusted CA's subject as its issuer, arbitrary bytes where the signature goes, a validity window in the past and the attacker's own key pair is sufficient. Affected builds define WOLFSSL_SMALL_CERT_VERIFY, which is off by default, is not set implicitly by any platform or preset header, and is not reachable from any CMake option; the autotools routes are --enable-lowresource, --enable-leantls, --enable-tinytls13=cert and --enable-tinytls13=mutualauth, and examples/configs/user_settings_embedded.h reaches it through WC_CFG_SMALL_CERT_VERIFY, which ships as 0, while neither --enable-all nor --enable-distro enables it at all. The application must additionally install a verify callback through wolfSSL_CTX_set_verify() or wolfSSL_set_verify() with WOLFSSL_VERIFY_PEER that returns 1 for ASN_BEFORE_DATE_E or ASN_AFTER_DATE_E; wolfSSL ships this exact shape as myVerify() in wolfssl/test.h under VERIFY_OVERRIDE_DATE_ERR, which examples/client -D selects. An application with no callback, or whose callback returns preverify for date errors, still fails the handshake, and wolfSSL_CertManagerVerifyBuffer() and wc_CheckCertSignature() report ASN_SIG_CONFIRM_E correctly in the same binary. TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3 are affected in both directions, and DTLS reaches the same function; where the forged certificate is a chain certificate the callback's consent causes it to be cached in the WOLFSSL_CTX certificate manager, so an exposed deployment must restart the context or the process rather than merely reconnect.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS