CVE-2026-5501

high

Description

wolfSSL_X509_verify_cert in the OpenSSL compatibility layer accepts a certificate chain in which the leaf's signature is not checked, if the attacker supplies an untrusted intermediate with Basic Constraints `CA:FALSE` that is legitimately signed by a trusted root. An attacker who obtains any leaf certificate from a trusted CA (e.g. a free DV cert from Let's Encrypt) can forge a certificate for any subject name with any public key and arbitrary signature bytes, and the function returns `WOLFSSL_SUCCESS` / `X509_V_OK`. The native wolfSSL TLS handshake path (`ProcessPeerCerts`) is not susceptible and the issue is limited to applications using the OpenSSL compatibility API directly, which would include integrations of wolfSSL into nginx and haproxy.

References

https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl/pull/10102

Details

Source: Mitre, NVD

Published: 2026-04-10

Updated: 2026-04-10

Risk Information

CVSS v2

Base Score: 6.4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:N

Severity: Medium

CVSS v3

Base Score: 7.5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

Severity: High

CVSS v4

Base Score: 8.6

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