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CRITICAL

CVE-2026-73253

CVE-2026-73253 — Mongoose: TLS Hostname Verification Bypass via Overly Permissive Wildcard Matching

Mongoose is an embedded web server and network library. Prior to version 7.22, an on-path network attacker with a wildcard certificate for a parent domain can impersonate deeper subdomains to a client using the built-in TLS stack. The mg_tls_verify_cert_san() and mg_tls_verify_cert_cn() functions in src/tls_builtin.c call mg_match(), whose wildcard can cross DNS label boundaries, so a pattern such as *.example.com can match foo.bar.example.com. The resulting hostname verification bypass permits interception and modification of TLS traffic. This issue is fixed in version 7.22.

Published Updated Sources: cvelistV5, GitHub_M

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

Affects

cesanta

mongoose

CVSS base

9.1

CRITICAL

CISA SSVC assessment

Three decision points CISA publishes for the CVEs it assesses · SSVC 2.0.3. A stakeholder decision, not a severity score.

CISA

Exploitation

PoC

none · proof-of-concept · active

Automatable

No

can an attacker script all four kill-chain steps

Technical impact

Total

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)

cesanta

Products (1)

mongoose

Every base score collected

Sources score independently and disagree; each row says who scored it and under which version.

ScoreVersionSeverityExpl.ImpactSource
9.1CVSS 4.0CRITICAL——cvelistV5

Weakness & attack patterns

  • CWE-295

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 /tls_builtin.c.

References

4 on the record

Elsewhere on this site

  • cesantaevery CVE for this vendor
  • CWE-295other pages naming this weakness

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.