wolfSSL up to 5.9.0 wc_AriaEncrypt nonce re-use

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability labeled as critical has been found in wolfSSL up to 5.9.0. Affected by this issue is the function wc_AriaEncrypt. Such manipulation leads to nonce re-use. This vulnerability is documented as CVE-2026-5446. The attack can be executed remotely. There is not any exploit available. The affected component should be upgraded.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in wolfSSL up to 5.9.0. It has been rated as critical. Affected by this issue is the function wc_AriaEncrypt. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a nonce re-use vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-323. Nonces should be used for the present occasion and only once. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

In wolfSSL, ARIA-GCM cipher suites used in TLS 1.2 and DTLS 1.2 reuse an identical 12-byte GCM nonce for every application-data record. Because wc_AriaEncrypt is stateless and passes the caller-supplied IV verbatim to the MagicCrypto SDK with no internal counter, and because the explicit IV is zero-initialized at session setup and never incremented in non-FIPS builds. This vulnerability affects wolfSSL builds configured with --enable-aria and the proprietary MagicCrypto SDK (a non-default, opt-in configuration required for Korean regulatory deployments). AES-GCM is not affected because wc_AesGcmEncrypt_ex maintains an internal invocation counter independently of the call-site guard.

The weakness was released by Calif.io. The advisory is available at github.com. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2026-5446 since 04/02/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be launched remotely. Technical details are known, but there is no available exploit. This vulnerability is assigned to T1600.001 by the MITRE ATT&CK project.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 305894 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-5446), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 5.9.1 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying a patch is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at github.com. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at Tenable (305894). If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

Productinfo

Name

• wolfSSL

Version

• 5.0
• 5.1
• 5.2
• 5.3
• 5.4
• 5.5
• 5.6
• 5.7
• 5.8
• 5.9.0

License

• open-source

Website

• Product: https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl/

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If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

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