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OpenAdvisories
Medium · 4.2 CVE-2026-33248 BIT-nats-2026-33248EUVD-2026-15999GHSA-3f24-pcvm-5jqcGO-2026-4828

NATS has mTLS verify_and_map authentication bypass via incorrect Subject DN matching

Published Mar 25, 2026 · Updated Mar 26, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

NATS-Server is a High-Performance server for NATS.io, a cloud and edge native messaging system. Prior to versions 2.11.15 and 2.12.6, when using mTLS for client identity, with `verify_and_map` to derive a NATS identity from the client certificate's Subject DN, certain patterns of RDN would not be correctly enforced, allowing for authentication bypass. This does require a valid certificate from a CA already trusted for client certificates, and `DN` naming patterns which the NATS maintainers consider highly unlikely. So this is an unlikely attack. Nonetheless, administrators who have been very sophisticated in their `DN` construction patterns might conceivably be impacted. Versions 2.11.15 and 2.12.6 contain a fix. As a workaround, developers should review their CA issuing practices.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
nats-io nats-server < 2.11.15, >= 2.12.0-RC.1, < 2.12.6 —

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 nats-server 2.12.6-1 —
Debian 13 nats-server No fix yet —
Debian 12 nats-server No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 nats-server No fix yet —
Ubuntu 25.10 nats-server No fix yet —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS nats-server No fix yet —
Show 1 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 26.04 LTS nats-server 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 0.0.20260326T203309-150000.1.155.2 SUSE-SU-2026:1135-1
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Alpine v3.24 nats-server 2.12.6-r0 —
Alpine v3.23 nats-server 2.12.6-r0 —

Wolfi

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Wolfi rolling k3s +1 1.35.2.1-r4 —
Wolfi rolling k3s-1.32 +1 1.32.13.1-r7 —
Wolfi rolling kine 0.14.15-r1 —
Wolfi rolling nats 0.3.2-r0 —
Wolfi rolling nats-top 0.6.3-r18 —
Wolfi rolling telegraf-1.38 1.38.1-r1 —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Go github.com/nats-io/nats-server all versions — GHSA-3f24-pcvm-5jqc
Go github.com/nats-io/nats-server/v2 < 2.11.15 2.11.15 GHSA-3f24-pcvm-5jqc
Go github.com/nats-io/nats-server/v2 >= 2.12.0-RC.1, < 2.12.6 2.12.6 GHSA-3f24-pcvm-5jqc
Go github.com/nats-io/nats-server/v2 < 2.11.15 · >= 2.12.0-RC.1, < 2.12.6 2.11.15, 2.12.6 GO-2026-4828

Advisories 3

References