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HIGH

Prefix-substitution forgery via integer overflow in wolfCrypt CMAC

Published Apr 10, 2026

Description

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.

Affected products

Remediation

No remediation recorded yet.

Metrics

References (1)

Change history (0)

No recorded changes yet.

Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner wolfSSL
Published Apr 10, 2026
Updated Apr 10, 2026
Reserved Apr 3, 2026
CISA Vulnrichment
Updated Apr 10, 2026
NVD
Status Analyzed
Modified Jun 17, 2026
Red Hat
Severity n/a
Public date n/a