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OpenAdvisories
High · 8.6 CVE-2026-5501 EUVD-2026-21294GHSA-hg75-4cmp-f367

Improper Certificate Signature Verification in X.509 Chain Validation Allows Forged Leaf Certificates

Published Apr 10, 2026 · Updated Apr 22, 2026 · Assigned by wolfSSL

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.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
wolfSSL wolfSSL ≤ 5.9.0 —

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 13 wolfssl No fix yet —
Debian 12 wolfssl No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 wolfssl No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS wolfssl No fix yet —
Ubuntu 25.10 wolfssl No fix yet —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS wolfssl No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS wolfssl No fix yet —
Show 3 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS wolfssl No fix yet —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS wolfssl No fix yet —
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS wolfssl No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Alpine v3.24 wolfssl 5.9.1-r0 —
Alpine v3.23 wolfssl 5.9.1-r0 —

References