CVE-2026-53604

nebula-mesh: CA private key not zeroized on web mobile-bundle error paths

HIGH
7.1
CVSS Score
Published: September 4, 2026 at 07:40 PM UTC
Updated: September 8, 2026 at 09:19 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorNebula Mesh

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Severity
HIGH7.1
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.2%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

nebula-mesh is a self-hosted control plane for Slack Nebula mesh VPN. Prior to version 0.3.8, the web handler renderMobileBundle passes the real *pki.CAResolver directly into mobilebundle.Build. Inside Build, resolver.LoadByID decrypts the CA's ed25519 private key into a *pki.CAManager, but Build never calls CAManager.Wipe() on any return path. As a result, when a mobile-bundle request goes through the web UI and Build returns — especially on error (missing network, invalid prefix, DB error, signing failure) — the plaintext CA private key remains on the Go heap, unwiped, until garbage collection. An attacker able to read process memory (core dump, swap, memory-scraping) can recover the CA signing key, which would allow minting arbitrary host certificates for the mesh. The API handler already does this correctly: it loads the CAManager, defer caMgr.Wipe(), and wraps it in caManagerResolver. Only the web path is affected. This issue has been patched in version 0.3.8.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 0.3.8
Affected range stops below 0.3.8, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

7.1HIGHGitHub_M
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusDEFERRED
CWE
CWE-212CWE-316

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