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Fencer Intel
high 8.1

CVE-2026-5501 json

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

published 7mo ago modified 3mo ago also EUVD-2026-21294 , GHSA-hg75-4cmp-f367 , JLSEC-2026-730

cvss
8.1
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 25%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • julia wolfSSL_jll 5.9.2+0
  • wolfssl Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23 5.9.1-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2026-5501

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Is CVE-2026-5501 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
6mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.32% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 25% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 8.6 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
CNA 4.0 8.6 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/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
NVD 3.1 8.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
OSV 3.1 8.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
julia wolfSSL_jll
<5.9.2+0
5.9.2+0

Affected products

  • wolfSSL wolfSSL

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-295 Improper Certificate Validation

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.