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CVE-2026-93302 – TLS/DTLS Authentication Bypass via Forged CA Certificates – wolfSSL 5.3.0 through 5

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Summary

CVE-2026-93302 is a certificate validation flaw in wolfSSL’s MatchTrustedPeer function that ignores the public key of a loaded trusted-peer certificate when matching it against a presented certificate. This allows an attacker who knows which CA certificates a client trusts to forge a "CA clone" certificate that passes verification, letting a malicious TLS/DTLS server bypass client authentication. The issue affects wolfSSL 5.3.0 through 5.9.2 and carries a CVSS v4.0 base score of 8.3 (High).

Technical details

  • Root cause: MatchTrustedPeer compares certificates against the trusted-peer certificate store but fails to validate the public key of the matched certificate, so an attacker-crafted certificate sharing other matched attributes (e.g., subject) can be treated as trusted even though it uses a different key pair.
  • Trigger conditions: Exploitable in builds where the WOLFSSL_TRUST_PEER_CERT macro is enabled and the application loads CA certificates via wolfSSL_CTX_trust_peer_cert() or wolfSSL_trust_peer_cert(). When OPENSSL_COMPATIBLE_DEFAULTS is also defined, the exposure widens to affect all CA certificate loading APIs generally — a configuration present in common autoconf-based builds (e.g., nginx, HAProxy, stunnel, wpa_supplicant, Apache httpd, hitch, BIND, rsyslog, ffmpeg, and various distro packages).
  • Attack vector: Network — a malicious (D)TLS server that knows which CAs the connecting client trusts can present a forged certificate to bypass client-side authentication of the server, without needing to possess the actual private key or a pre-shared key (PSK) in PSK-based connections.
  • Impact: High integrity impact — successful exploitation lets an attacker impersonate a trusted server/peer and bypass an authentication check that the client relies on, undermining the confidentiality and integrity guarantees of the TLS/DTLS session.

Affected software

  • wolfSSL versions 5.3.0 through 5.9.2 (inclusive), when built with WOLFSSL_TRUST_PEER_CERT enabled and using wolfSSL_CTX_trust_peer_cert() / wolfSSL_trust_peer_cert()
  • Exposure widens to all CA certificate loading APIs in builds that also define OPENSSL_COMPATIBLE_DEFAULTS (common in autoconf-based builds distributed with nginx, HAProxy, stunnel, wpa_supplicant, Apache httpd, hitch, BIND, rsyslog, ffmpeg, and various Linux distributions)

Severity

  • CVSS v4.0 Base Score: 8.3 (High)
  • Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Mitigation and recommended actions

  • Immediate: Upgrade to wolfSSL 5.9.4 or later, which contains the fix for MatchTrustedPeer.
  • If patching is not immediately possible:
    • Disable the OPENSSL_COMPATIBLE_DEFAULTS build option (e.g., avoid --enable-openssl-compatible-defaults) to narrow the exposed API surface.
    • Avoid using wolfSSL_CTX_trust_peer_cert() and wolfSSL_trust_peer_cert() for certificate loading until patched.
    • Review builds of downstream applications (nginx, HAProxy, stunnel, wpa_supplicant, Apache httpd, hitch, BIND, rsyslog, ffmpeg, and Linux distribution packages) that statically or dynamically link wolfSSL, and confirm whether they enable the affected macros.

References

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