CVE-2026-55960: Un-negotiated Raw Public Key (RFC 7250) accepted in place of X.509, bypassing chain validation

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
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: 2026-06-25 · updated 2026-06-26
Weakness: CWE-295

Description

Un-negotiated Raw Public Key (RFC 7250) accepted in place of an X.509 certificate, bypassing chain validation. A raw public key has no chain, so ParseCertRelative() accepts it without performing any trust verification; it must therefore only be accepted when RPK was actually negotiated for that peer. The check now defaults the expected type to X.509 (per RFC 7250/8446) when no type was negotiated, comparing against the received server certificate type on the client and the selected client certificate type on the server, and rejects any mismatch, including an un-negotiated raw public key, with UNSUPPORTED_CERTIFICATE. Only affects builds with Raw Public Key support (HAVE_RPK) enabled - disabled by default in a standalone build, but included in --enable-all.

Affected products

wolfSSL: from 5.6.4 before 5.9.2 — fixed in 5.9.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: wolfSSL 5.9.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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