CVE-2026-55962: TLS 1.3 post-handshake authentication: server accepts Finished without client Certificate/CertificateVerify

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-55962 is a medium (CVSS 6.5) Improper Authentication vulnerability in wolfssl. EPSS estimates a 0.24% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 14.5% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 25-06-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 26-06-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

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 / --enable-postauth, included in --enable-all) that enable WOLFSSL_VERIFY_POST_HANDSHAKE and request a client certificate after the handshake via wolfSSL_request_certificate(). Clients, and servers that do not use post-handshake authentication, are unaffected.

• CWE-287Improper AuthenticationWhen an actor claims to have a given identity, the product does not prove or insufficiently proves that the claim is correct.