CVE-2026-55962
CVE-2026-55962 — TLS 1.3 post-handshake authentication: server accepts Finished without client Certificate/CertificateVerify
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 /…
Published Updated Sources: cvelistV5, wolfSSL
Triage
Is it exploited, how likely is exploitation, what does it touch, and how severe do the scoring sources call it.
Exploitation
Unreported
no source claims exploitation
EPSS
0%
chance of exploitation in 30 days
CVSS base
6
MEDIUM
CISA SSVC assessment
Three decision points CISA publishes for the CVEs it assesses · SSVC 2.0.3. A stakeholder decision, not a severity score.
Exploitation
None
none · proof-of-concept · active
Automatable
No
can an attacker script all four kill-chain steps
Technical impact
Partial
partial · total control of the vulnerable component
Affected scope
The catalog records vendors and products as separate lists, not pairs, so which product belongs to which vendor is not something this page can say.
Vendors (1)
Products (1)
Every base score collected
Sources score independently and disagree; each row says who scored it and under which version.
| Score | Version | Severity | Expl. | Impact | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | CVSS 4.0 | MEDIUM | — | — | cvelistV5 |
Weakness & attack patterns
- CWE-287
Attack patterns reported against this CVE. The ATT&CK techniques below are inferred from its weakness class.
- T1548Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism
- T1040Network Sniffing
- T1185Browser Session Hijacking
Detection
Read off the CVSS vector and the weakness class. Starting points, not rules we have tested.
- Search application, proxy, and WAF logs for requests touching /absent.
References
2 on the record
Elsewhere on this site
Not in any source we poll
Listed rather than left blank: an empty field and an unmeasured one look identical on screen, and only one is a reason to look elsewhere.
- No confirmed IOCs, IP addresses, domains, file hashes, or malware artifacts supplied.
- No organization-specific asset inventory, compensating-control status, or patch deployment evidence supplied.
- No exploit packet captures, log samples, or incident case IDs supplied.