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🛡️ CVE-2026-45445 on Alpine — openssl

⚪ Unknown ✅ No Known Exploit OSV
N/A
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

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.

Distribution advisory

This page covers CVE-2026-45445 as tracked by Alpine, for the package openssl. The fix is available in version 3.5.7-r0; earlier versions remain affected.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs no privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality high, integrity none, availability none.

CVSS metrics in full

The score comes from this vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

  • Attack vector: Network — reachable from anywhere that can route to the service.
  • Attack complexity: Low — the attack works reliably, with no preparation.
  • Privileges required: None — an unauthenticated stranger can try it.
  • User interaction: None — nobody has to be tricked into anything.
  • Scope: Unchanged — the damage stays inside the vulnerable component.
  • Confidentiality impact: High — total loss, or loss the attacker controls.
  • Integrity impact: None.
  • Availability impact: None.

Weakness class

ALPINE-CVE-2026-45445 is classified as CWE-325: Missing Cryptographic Step. A required step of a cryptographic algorithm is skipped, weakening the guarantees it should provide.

Affected software

ALPINE-CVE-2026-45445 is recorded against 1 package.

  • openssl (from 3.0.0 up to 3.5.7-r0)

Timeline and source

Published on 9 June 2026 and last revised on 8 July 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from OSV.

References

security.alpinelinux.org (Advisory)

Other advisories for this package

openssl has other advisories on record. If you are patching this one, these are worth checking on the same host:

Same weakness in other software

These advisories are the same class of weakness (CWE-325: Missing Cryptographic Step) in other software:

CVE-2026-45445 on other distributions

Each distribution ships its own build and its own fixed version. Pick the one you run:

Details

Severity Unknown
CVSS Score N/A
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source OSV
Published 2026-06-09
Updated 2026-08-20
Modified 2026-07-08
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
openssl 3.0.0 3.5.7-r0

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