Medium severity · published Jun 9, 2026
CVE-2026-45446
Incorrect Tag Processing for Empty Messages in AES-GCM-SIV and AES-SIV modes
4.8
CVSS
0.4%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Issue summary: The implementations of AES-SIV (RFC 5297) and AES-GCM-SIV
(RFC 8452) mishandle the authentication of AAD (Additional Authenticated
Data) with an empty ciphertext allowing a forgery of such messages.
Impact summary: An attacker can forge empty messages with arbitrary AAD
to the victim's application using these ciphers.
AES-SIV (RFC 5297) and AES-GCM-SIV (RFC 8452) are nonce-misuse-resistant AEAD
modes: they accept a key, nonce, optional AAD (bytes that are authenticated
but not encrypted), and plaintext, and produces ciphertext plus a 16-byte
tag. On decrypt, `EVP_DecryptFinal_ex()` is documented to return success only
if the tag is verified succesfully.
In OpenSSL's provider implementation of these ciphers, the expected tag is
computed only when decryption function is invoked with non-empty data.
If the caller supplies AAD and then calls `EVP_DecryptFinal_ex()` without
invocation of the ciphertext update, which can happen when the received
ciphertext length is zero, the tag is never recalculated and still holds its
all-zeros value.
When AES-GCM-SIV is used, an attacker who sends arbitrary AAD, empty
ciphertext, and all-zeros tag passes authentication under any key they do not
know, single-shot. When AES-SIV is used, for mounting the attack it's
necessary for the application to reuse the decryption context without
resetting the key.
AES-SIV is implemented since OpenSSL 3.0. AES-GCM-SIV is implemented since
OpenSSL 3.2.
No protocols implemented in OpenSSL itself (TLS/CMS/PKCS7/HPKE/QUIC) support
either AES-GCM-SIV or AES-SIV. To mount an attack, the applications must
implement their own protocol and use the EVP interface. Also they must skip the
ciphertext update when a message with an empty ciphertext arrives.
The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, and 3.0 are not affected by this
issue, as these algorithms are not FIPS approved and the affected code is
outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.4% · higher than 38% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
OP
OpenSSL · OpenSSL
4.0.0 before 4.0.1; 3.6.0 before 3.6.3; 3.5.0 before 3.5.7; 3.4.0 before 3.4.6; 3.0.0 before 3.0.21 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-45446
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-45446
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/25b32cd9d41d2bc01b6abc425bb4baf2c2236fdc
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/71e2a5d263518cf5866043bd60ee4994d59e53a3
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/7fe3f33a3b3a4c487aa4dcdbc87057f66ffd2b85
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/daca0f48e4a69a2892a62262bad59e62a8a76598
Patch
https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/eec5e9bf0d867333b8495e456f5235d225798a68
Vendor Advisory
https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260609.txt
More from OpenSSL
7.5
CVE-2014-0160
OpenSSL Information Disclosure Vulnerability
9.8
CVE-2026-63073
Untrusted Sender DN Used as Format String in CMP Response Validation
9.8
CVE-2026-31789
Heap Buffer Overflow in Hexadecimal Conversion
9.8
CVE-2022-2274
RSA implementation bug in AVX512IFMA instructions
9.8
CVE-2021-3711
SM2 Decryption Buffer Overflow
