CVE-2026-81535 PUBLISHED

wolfSSH SSH client accepts unsolicited forwarded-tcpip channel opens without an authorization check

Assigner: wolfSSL
Reserved: 26.08.2026 Published: 07.10.2026 Updated: 07.10.2026

In wolfSSH through 1.5.0 built with --enable-fwd, DoChannelOpen() in src/internal.c gates only direct-tcpip channel opens with the forwarding policy callback. forwarded-tcpip opens are admitted without an authorization check and are not capped in number, allowing a malicious SSH peer to make an endpoint allocate unbounded per-channel buffers for forwarding channels the application never authorized. A client also does not check a forwarded-tcpip open against the forwards it registered with a tcpip-forward request, as RFC 4254 section 7.2 requires, so a malicious server can open forwarding channels for addresses and ports the client never asked it to forward.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CVSS Score: 6.3

Product Status

Vendor wolfSSL Inc.
Product wolfSSH
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 1.4.8 to 1.5.0 (incl.)

Credits

  • zhangph (GitHub afldl) finder

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-862 Missing Authorization CWE
  • CWE-863 Incorrect Authorization CWE

Impacts

  • CAPEC-130 Excessive Allocation