CVE-2026-5501
Improper Certificate Signature Verification in X.509 Chain Validation Allows Forged Leaf Certificates
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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.
Remediation
No guide yetNo remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.
References (1)
SSVC — Action Prioritization
SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.
CVSS
- Attack Vector
- NETWORK
- Complexity
- LOW
- Privileges
- LOW
- User Interaction
- NONE
- Scope
- UNCHANGED
- Confidentiality
- HIGH
- Integrity
- HIGH
- Availability
- NONE
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