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OpenAdvisories
High · 8.8 CVE-2026-27586 EUVD-2026-8541GHSA-hffm-g8v7-wrv7GO-2026-4539

Caddy's mTLS client authentication silently fails open when CA certificate file is missing or malformed

Published Feb 24, 2026 · Updated Feb 26, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

Caddy is an extensible server platform that uses TLS by default. Prior to version 2.11.1, two swallowed errors in `ClientAuthentication.provision()` cause mTLS client certificate authentication to silently fail open when a CA certificate file is missing, unreadable, or malformed. The server starts without error but accepts any client certificate signed by any system-trusted CA, completely bypassing the intended private CA trust boundary. Any deployment using `trusted_ca_cert_file` or `trusted_ca_certs_pem_files` for mTLS will silently degrade to accepting any system-trusted client certificate if the CA file becomes unavailable. This can happen due to a typo in the path, file rotation, corruption, or permission changes. The server gives no indication that mTLS is misconfigured. Version 2.11.1 fixes the vulnerability.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
caddyserver caddy < 2.11.1 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 caddy 2.11.2-1 —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 caddy No fix yet —
Ubuntu 25.10 caddy No fix yet —
Show 2 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 26.04 LTS caddy No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS caddy No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
openSUSE Leap 16.0 govulncheck-vulndb 0.0.20260723T184607-160000.1.1 openSUSE-SU-2026:21483-1
openSUSE Leap 15.6 govulncheck-vulndb 0.0.20260226T182644-150000.1.149.1 SUSE-SU-2026:0757-1
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Alpine v3.24 caddy 2.11.1-r0 —
Alpine v3.23 caddy 2.11.2-r0 —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Go github.com/caddyserver/caddy/v2 < 2.11.1 2.11.1 GHSA-hffm-g8v7-wrv7

Advisories 2

References