0.0
NA
CVE-2026-45445
AES-OCB IV Ignored on EVP_Cipher() Path
Description

Issue summary: When an application drives an AES-OCB context through the public EVP_Cipher() one-shot interface, the application-supplied initialisation vector (IV) is silently discarded. Impact summary: Every message encrypted under the same key uses the same effective nonce regardless of the IV supplied by the caller, resulting in (key, nonce) reuse and loss of confidentiality. If the same code path is used to compute the authentication tag, the tag depends only on the (key, IV) pair and not on the plaintext or ciphertext, allowing universal forgery of arbitrary ciphertext from a single captured message. OpenSSL provides two ways to drive a cipher: the documented streaming interface (EVP_CipherUpdate / EVP_CipherFinal_ex) and a lower-level one-shot, EVP_Cipher(), whose documentation explicitly recommends against use by applications in favour of EVP_CipherUpdate() and EVP_CipherFinal_ex(). The OCB provider's streaming handler flushes the application-supplied IV into the OCB context before processing data; the one-shot handler did not. Every call to EVP_Cipher() on an AES-OCB context therefore ran with the all-zero key-derived offset state left by cipher initialisation, regardless of the caller's IV. If EVP_EncryptFinal_ex() is subsequently used to obtain the authentication tag, the deferred IV setup runs at that point and clears the running checksum that should have been accumulated over the plaintext. The resulting tag is a function of (key, IV) only and verifies against any ciphertext produced under the same (key, IV) pair. The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected: AES-OCB is not a TLS cipher suite, and libssl does not call EVP_Cipher() in any case. Applications that drive AES-OCB through the documented streaming AEAD API (EVP_CipherUpdate / EVP_CipherFinal_ex) are not affected. Only applications that combine the AES-OCB cipher with the EVP_Cipher() one-shot API are vulnerable. The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as AES-OCB is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

INFO

Published Date :

June 9, 2026, 5:17 p.m.

Last Modified :

June 9, 2026, 5:17 p.m.

Remotely Exploit :

No
Affected Products

The following products are affected by CVE-2026-45445 vulnerability. Even if cvefeed.io is aware of the exact versions of the products that are affected, the information is not represented in the table below.

No affected product recoded yet

Solution
Applications using AES-OCB with EVP_Cipher() must switch to the streaming API.
  • Use EVP_CipherUpdate and EVP_CipherFinal_ex for AES-OCB.
  • Avoid using the EVP_Cipher() one-shot interface.
CWE - Common Weakness Enumeration

While CVE identifies specific instances of vulnerabilities, CWE categorizes the common flaws or weaknesses that can lead to vulnerabilities. CVE-2026-45445 is associated with the following CWEs:

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC) stores attack patterns, which are descriptions of the common attributes and approaches employed by adversaries to exploit the CVE-2026-45445 weaknesses.

We scan GitHub repositories to detect new proof-of-concept exploits. Following list is a collection of public exploits and proof-of-concepts, which have been published on GitHub (sorted by the most recently updated).

Results are limited to the first 15 repositories due to potential performance issues.

The following list is the news that have been mention CVE-2026-45445 vulnerability anywhere in the article.

The following table lists the changes that have been made to the CVE-2026-45445 vulnerability over time.

Vulnerability history details can be useful for understanding the evolution of a vulnerability, and for identifying the most recent changes that may impact the vulnerability's severity, exploitability, or other characteristics.

  • New CVE Received by [email protected]

    Jun. 09, 2026

    Action Type Old Value New Value
    Added Description Issue summary: When an application drives an AES-OCB context through the public EVP_Cipher() one-shot interface, the application-supplied initialisation vector (IV) is silently discarded. Impact summary: Every message encrypted under the same key uses the same effective nonce regardless of the IV supplied by the caller, resulting in (key, nonce) reuse and loss of confidentiality. If the same code path is used to compute the authentication tag, the tag depends only on the (key, IV) pair and not on the plaintext or ciphertext, allowing universal forgery of arbitrary ciphertext from a single captured message. OpenSSL provides two ways to drive a cipher: the documented streaming interface (EVP_CipherUpdate / EVP_CipherFinal_ex) and a lower-level one-shot, EVP_Cipher(), whose documentation explicitly recommends against use by applications in favour of EVP_CipherUpdate() and EVP_CipherFinal_ex(). The OCB provider's streaming handler flushes the application-supplied IV into the OCB context before processing data; the one-shot handler did not. Every call to EVP_Cipher() on an AES-OCB context therefore ran with the all-zero key-derived offset state left by cipher initialisation, regardless of the caller's IV. If EVP_EncryptFinal_ex() is subsequently used to obtain the authentication tag, the deferred IV setup runs at that point and clears the running checksum that should have been accumulated over the plaintext. The resulting tag is a function of (key, IV) only and verifies against any ciphertext produced under the same (key, IV) pair. The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected: AES-OCB is not a TLS cipher suite, and libssl does not call EVP_Cipher() in any case. Applications that drive AES-OCB through the documented streaming AEAD API (EVP_CipherUpdate / EVP_CipherFinal_ex) are not affected. Only applications that combine the AES-OCB cipher with the EVP_Cipher() one-shot API are vulnerable. The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4 and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as AES-OCB is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.
    Added CWE CWE-325
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/security/commit/323f0b6e7d530a4cb4336d50c88cb70f3ac2a451
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/security/commit/787a6dfba81b7b09c1e05ab31396c0cd7c36b3f7
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/security/commit/7ac4715234ee72d9f3c93426a2c08554b5b771af
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/security/commit/843c9b94ca9c2ed248bb30127bb4f3d7af0d607c
    Added Reference https://github.com/openssl/security/commit/983d54b5cce8d16147548ed1a37892d1720bbab6
    Added Reference https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260609.txt
EPSS is a daily estimate of the probability of exploitation activity being observed over the next 30 days. Following chart shows the EPSS score history of the vulnerability.