Vulnerability Details CVE-2026-55962
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.
Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score
EPSS Score 0.002
EPSS Ranking 10.2%
CVSS Severity
CVSS v3 Score 6.5
Products affected by CVE-2026-55962
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.5.4
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.6.0
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.6.2
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.6.3
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.6.4
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.6.6
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.7.0
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.7.2
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.7.4
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.7.6
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.8.0
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.8.2
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cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:5.8.4