CVE-2026-6291
Wolfssl 3.9.10 – 5.9.2
Raw vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:XSummary
CVE-2026-6291 is a medium-severity Observable Timing Discrepancy (CWE-208) vulnerability in Wolfssl Wolfssl. Its CVSS base score is 6.0 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Password Guessing (T1110.001); ranked at the 5th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-8 (Security and Privacy Engineering Principles) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-39482
Vulnerability Data
Bleichenbacher padding oracle in PKCS#7 KTRI decryption. When decrypting PKCS#7 EnvelopedData using RSA PKCS#1 v1.5 key transport, wolfSSL returned distinguishable error codes depending on whether RSA padding validation failed versus whether the decrypted content was malformed. An attacker able to…
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submit crafted EnvelopedData messages and observe error responses could use this as a padding oracle to incrementally recover the encrypted Content Encryption Key (CEK). The fix generates a deterministic pseudo-random fake CEK on padding failure (via HMAC-SHA256) and proceeds with decryption identically, using constant-time operations throughout, so that all failure paths produce the same error regardless of padding validity.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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V11.2.4
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing can include timing analysis or side-channel test cases that reveal observable timing discrepancies.
Engineering principles can mandate constant-time algorithms and side-channel resistance so timing discrepancies are never introduced.
Requiring approved cryptographic modules and algorithms implicitly demands implementations free of observable timing leaks.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC practices directly require constant-time implementations that eliminate observable timing discrepancies.