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Fencer Vulns
critical 9.1

CVE-2026-73251 json

Mongoose Built-in TLS: CA-bundle certificate chain accepted without any signature verification

published 2026-08-20 2 mo ago modified 2026-10-18 21 d ago also EUVD-2026-63494 , JLSEC-2026-1376

cvss
9.1
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 8%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Mongoose is an embedded web server and network library. Prior to 7.23, a network attacker can impersonate a TLS server to a Mongoose client configured with a multi-certificate CA bundle. In src/tls_builtin.c, the mg_tls_init() function stores the bundle in tls->ca_bundle_der while tls->ca_der.len remains zero, and mg_tls_recv_cert() uses tls_bundle_find() to accept a Common Name match without calling mg_tls_verify_cert_signature(). A forged self-signed certificate can therefore satisfy hostname and CertificateVerify checks and enable interception, credential disclosure, traffic modification, and malicious responses. This issue is fixed in version 7.23.

Patch / fix

  • cesanta mongoose 7.23
  • cesanta mongoose_embedded_web_server_library 7.23
  • mongoose Debian 14 7.23+ds-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-73251

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-73251 updated cvss 7.4

mongoose: Mongoose Built-in TLS: CA-bundle certificate chain accepted without any signature verification

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
total
Assessed
2 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 9.3 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CNA 4.0 9.3 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
NVD 3.1 9.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
julia Mongoose_jll
all versions
no fix listed

Affected products

  • cesanta mongoose

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-295 Improper Certificate Validation

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.