CVE-2026-5477 PUBLISHED

Prefix-substitution forgery via integer overflow in wolfCrypt CMAC

Assigner: wolfSSL
Reserved: 03.04.2026 Published: 10.04.2026 Updated: 10.04.2026

An integer overflow existed in the wolfCrypt CMAC implementation, that could be exploited to forge CMAC tags. The function wc_CmacUpdate used the guard if (cmac->totalSz != 0) to skip XOR-chaining on the first block (where digest is all-zeros and the XOR is a no-op). However, totalSz is word32 and wraps to zero after 2^28 block flushes (4 GiB), causing the guard to erroneously discard the live CBC-MAC chain state. Any two messages sharing a common suffix beyond the 4 GiB mark then produce identical CMAC tags, enabling a zero-work prefix-substitution forgery. The fix removes the guard, making the XOR unconditional; the no-op property on the first block is preserved because digest is zero-initialized by wc_InitCmac_ex.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CVSS Score: 8.2

Product Status

Vendor wolfSSL
Product wolfSSL
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0 to 5.9.0 (incl.)

Credits

  • Calif.io in collaboration with Claude and Anthropic Research finder

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-190 Integer overflow or wraparound CWE