PublicCVE

CVE-2026-55962

MEDIUM6.0JSON exportCreate alert

Description

TLS 1.3 post-handshake authentication (PHA) issue where a server could accept a client's Finished message without the client having sent a Certificate and CertificateVerify. The post-handshake-auth exemption that allows an empty/absent peer certificate was only intended for the initial handshake, but it was also being applied while a post-handshake CertificateRequest was still outstanding. The check is now scoped to the initial handshake only: on the server, once a post-handshake CertificateRequest has been sent (certReqCtx is set), a peer certificate and a valid CertificateVerify are required again before the Finished is accepted, with empty-certificate handling following the configured verify mode (FAIL_IF_NO_PEER_CERT) just as during first-handshake client authentication. Only affects TLS 1.3 servers built with post-handshake authentication support (WOLFSSL_POST_HANDSHAKE_AUTH / --enable-postauth, included in --enable-all) that enable WOLFSSL_VERIFY_POST_HANDSHAKE and request a client certificate after the handshake via wolfSSL_request_certificate(). Clients, and servers that do not use post-handshake authentication, are unaffected.

CVSS breakdown

CVSS 4.0
Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Attack Requirements
Present
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Confidentiality (Vulnerable System)
None
Integrity (Vulnerable System)
High
Availability (Vulnerable System)
None
Confidentiality (Subsequent System)
None
Integrity (Subsequent System)
None
Availability (Subsequent System)
None

Affected products