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CVE-2026-53604: nebula-mesh: CA private key not zeroized on web mobile-bundle error paths

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.1 v4.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2026-09-04 · updated 2026-09-08
• Weakness: CWE-212

Description

nebula-mesh is a self-hosted control plane for Slack Nebula mesh VPN. Prior to version 0.3.8, the web handler renderMobileBundle passes the real *pki.CAResolver directly into mobilebundle.Build. Inside Build, resolver.LoadByID decrypts the CA's ed25519 private key into a *pki.CAManager, but Build never calls CAManager.Wipe() on any return path. As a result, when a mobile-bundle request goes through the web UI and Build returns — especially on error (missing network, invalid prefix, DB error, signing failure) — the plaintext CA private key remains on the Go heap, unwiped, until garbage collection. An attacker able to read process memory (core dump, swap, memory-scraping) can recover the CA signing key, which would allow minting arbitrary host certificates for the mesh. The API handler already does this correctly: it loads the CAManager, defer caMgr.Wipe(), and wraps it in caManagerResolver. Only the web path is affected. This issue has been patched in version 0.3.8.

Affected products

• forgekeep nebula-mesh: before 0.3.8

References

• https://github.com/forgekeep/nebula-mesh/commit/1f1ab9aa8472239763d967e3d50a3cd53a1a79b9
• https://github.com/forgekeep/nebula-mesh/releases/tag/v0.3.8
• https://github.com/forgekeep/nebula-mesh/security/advisories/GHSA-2p2f-px33-4vv5

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