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Issue summary: ChaCha20-Poly1305 and AES-OCB decryption...

Critical severity Unreviewed Published Aug 25, 2026 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Sep 1, 2026

Package

No package listed— Suggest a package

Affected versions

Unknown

Patched versions

Unknown

Description

Issue summary: ChaCha20-Poly1305 and AES-OCB decryption with an empty
ciphertext can report success without verifying the supplied authentication
tag when the operation is finalized by calling the EVP_Cipher() function.

Impact summary: Applications calling EVP_Cipher() on an empty ciphertext and
expecting the call to check the AEAD tag may accept forged messages.

CWE: CWE-354 (Improper Validation of Integrity Check Value)

Description: The EVP_Cipher() API call for AEAD ciphers behaves like a one
shot encryption and decryption call. It also verifies the AEAD tag after the
decryption operation. However for AES-OCB and ChaCha20-Poly1305 ciphers
it skipped the AEAD tag verification when an empty ciphertext was passed to
the function. The callers of this function might believe that a successful
return indicates a valid AEAD tag for these ciphers, even when that has not
truly been validated in this case.

FIPS impact: no
The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, and 3.0 are not affected by this CVE
as the affected algorithms are not FIPS approved and thus not implemented
in the FIPS module.

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Aug 25, 2026
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Aug 25, 2026
Last updated Sep 1, 2026

Severity

Critical

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

EPSS score

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

This score estimates the probability of this vulnerability being exploited within the next 30 days. Data provided by FIRST.
(17th percentile)

Weaknesses

Improper Validation of Integrity Check Value

The product does not validate or incorrectly validates the integrity check values or checksums of a message. This may prevent it from detecting if the data has been modified or corrupted in transmission. Learn more on MITRE.

CVE ID

CVE-2026-75803

GHSA ID

GHSA-vr27-9w4v-hjw2

Source code

No known source code

Dependabot alerts are not supported on this advisory because it does not have a package from a supported ecosystem with an affected and fixed version.

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