High severity · published Apr 10, 2026
CVE-2026-5501
Improper Certificate Signature Verification in X.509 Chain Validation Allows Forged Leaf Certificates
8.1
CVSS
0.3%
EPSS
No
On KEV
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.3% · higher than 25% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
WO
wolfSSL · wolfSSL
through 5.9.0 · source: vendor, NVD
Affected product
WO
wolfSSL
wolfSSL
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