CVE-2026-81020wolfEngine reuses the AES-GCM nonce on every TLS 1.2 / DTLS 1.2 record
- 7.4HighCVSS base score
- 0.38%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 67% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
wolfEngine before 1.4.1 generates the 8-byte explicit AES-GCM nonce once when the TLS write key is set and never increments it per record. As a result every TLS 1.2 and DTLS 1.2 AES-GCM record within a connection is encrypted under an identical key and nonce pair. Reusing a GCM key and nonce discloses the keystream (the XOR of two ciphertexts equals the XOR of their plaintexts, so one known record recovers the others) and leaks the GHASH authentication key, enabling authentication tag forgery. AES-CCM, TLS 1.3, and non-TLS use of the cipher are not affected.
Timeline
ID reserved
By wolfSSL
- 2 days later
· 2 days later
Published
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| wolfSSLCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | High7.4 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N |
| NVDNVD · Analyzed | 3.1 | High7.4 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.38% · top 67% of all CVEs (12 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: High 7.4.
Affected products
- affected ≤ 1.4.0
What to do
Solution: Upgrade to wolfEngine 1.4.1, which increments the explicit nonce after each record. As an interim mitigation use AES-CCM or TLS 1.3 instead of TLS 1.2 / DTLS 1.2 AES-GCM.
References
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-67737 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-81020)Record last updated .