Vulnerability-Lookup

CVE-2026-13735 (GCVE-0-2026-13735)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-08-28 20:38 – Updated: 2026-09-01 12:27

Title

WireGuard keepalive transport-data messages accepted without Poly1305 authentication

Summary

Zephyr's WireGuard implementation in subsys/net/lib/wireguard/wg_crypto.c mishandled keepalive packets. In wg_process_data_message(), any type-4 transport-data message whose payload was exactly 16 bytes (an empty plaintext plus a bare Poly1305 tag, i.e. a keepalive) was accepted and returned immediately, before wg_decrypt_packet() was ever called. The Poly1305 authentication tag was therefore never verified; the only preceding gates were a cleartext receiver-index lookup (get_peer_keypair_for_index() on the attacker-supplied data_hdr->receiver) and a non-cryptographic keypair validity/expiry check. The path is reachable entirely from the network: inbound UDP on the WireGuard port is dispatched by wg_input() to handle_transport_data() and then wg_process_data_message(). The 32-bit receiver index is transmitted in cleartext in WireGuard handshake and data messages, so an on-path observer learns it directly and an off-path attacker can brute-force it against the UDP port. Given an active receiving-valid session for that index, an attacker could send a 16-byte garbage payload and have it accepted without possessing the session key. On acceptance the unauthenticated message caused the management layer to observe a spoofed NET_EVENT_VPN_CONNECTED signal (setting peer->first_valid and notifying any net_mgmt listener) and incremented the keepalive-RX statistic. The impact is limited to integrity of this status signal: no plaintext is decrypted or injected, no key is disclosed, and the early-return path did not update the peer endpoint or liveness timers, so there is no traffic-injection, session-takeover, or availability consequence. The fix removes the pre-decrypt early return so a 16-byte payload flows through wg_decrypt_packet(), which verifies the Poly1305 tag over the empty plaintext, followed by the existing anti-replay check; only an authenticated, non-replayed message is then recognised as a keepalive. Forged keepalives now fail the tag check and are counted as decrypt failures.

Severity

3.7 (Low)


                        
                          CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

SSVC

Exploitation: none Automatable: no Technical Impact: partial

CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)

Decision recorded 2026-09-01 12:26 UTC

CWE

CWE-290 - auth

Assigner

zephyr mitre root

References

2 references

URL	Tags
https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/comm…	patch
https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/secu…

Impacted products

1 product

Vendor	Product	Version	CPE status
zephyrproject	zephyr	Affected: 4.4.0 , < 4.4.2 (semver)	guessed

Show details on NVD website

JSON

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FKIE_CVE-2026-13735

Vulnerability from fkie_nvd - Published: 2026-08-28 22:16 - Updated: 2026-09-01 13:18

Severity

3.7 (Low) - CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Summary

References

	URL	Tags
	vulnerabilities@zephyrproject.org	https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/commit/87c520a55f0f0e7cd4adf8780166e45eaad6d81c
	vulnerabilities@zephyrproject.org	https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/security/advisories/GHSA-xxrw-r78f-f6mx

Impacted products

	Vendor	Product	Version

JSON

To clipboard

{
  "affected": [
    {
      "affectedData": [
        {
          "collectionURL": "https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr",
          "defaultStatus": "unaffected",
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            }
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      ],
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    }
  ],
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Sightings

Author	Source	Type	Date	Other

Nomenclature

Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.

Detection rules are retrieved from Rulezet.

The MITRE ATT&CK techniques below are AI-generated suggestions, inferred from the description of the vulnerability by the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-classification-roberta-base model, served locally by ML-Gateway. They have not been verified by an analyst and are provided for guidance only.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.

Action not permitted

CVE-2026-13735 (GCVE-0-2026-13735)

FKIE_CVE-2026-13735

Tags

Sightings

Nomenclature