CVE-2026-45446

NameCVE-2026-45446
DescriptionIssue 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.
SourceCVE (at NVD; CERT, ENISA, LWN, oss-sec, fulldisc, Debian ELTS, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE bugzilla/CVE, GitHub advisories/code/issues, web search, more)
ReferencesDSA-6335-1

Vulnerable and fixed packages

The table below lists information on source packages.

Source PackageReleaseVersionStatus
openssl (PTS)bullseye1.1.1w-0+deb11u1vulnerable
bullseye (security)1.1.1w-0+deb11u7vulnerable
bookworm3.0.20-1~deb12u1vulnerable
bookworm (security)3.0.20-1~deb12u2fixed
trixie3.5.6-1~deb13u1vulnerable
trixie (security)3.5.6-1~deb13u2fixed
forky, sid3.6.2-1vulnerable

The information below is based on the following data on fixed versions.

PackageTypeReleaseFixed VersionUrgencyOriginDebian Bugs
opensslsourcebookworm3.0.20-1~deb12u2DSA-6335-1
opensslsourcetrixie3.5.6-1~deb13u2DSA-6335-1
opensslsource(unstable)(unfixed)

Notes

https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260609.txt
Fixed by: https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/71e2a5d263518cf5866043bd60ee4994d59e53a3 (openssl-3.0.21)

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