Skip to main content
Meet us at Black Hat USA 2026— Las Vegas, August 1–6Book a Meeting
Mallory
Medium

Incorrect Tag Processing for Empty Messages in OpenSSL AES-GCM-SIV and AES-SIV

IdentifiersCVE-2026-45446CWE-347

OpenSSL's provider implementations of AES-SIV (RFC 5297) and AES-GCM-SIV (RFC 8452) incorrectly handle authentication when decrypting messages that contain Additional Authenticated Data (AAD) but an empty ciphertext. The flaw occurs because the expected authentication tag is only recomputed when the decryption path processes non-empty ciphertext data. If an application supplies AAD and then calls EVP_DecryptFinal_ex() without first invoking the ciphertext update path, as can occur when the received ciphertext length is zero, the internal expected tag remains its all-zero initial value instead of being derived from the AAD. As a result, authentication can incorrectly succeed for forged empty-ciphertext messages. For AES-GCM-SIV, an attacker can send arbitrary AAD, empty ciphertext, and an all-zero tag and pass authentication under any unknown key in a single attempt. For AES-SIV, exploitation additionally requires the application to reuse the decryption context without resetting the key. AES-SIV has been present since OpenSSL 3.0 and AES-GCM-SIV since OpenSSL 3.2. OpenSSL's own built-in protocols, including TLS, CMS, PKCS7, HPKE, and QUIC, do not use these modes, so exposure is limited to applications implementing their own protocols via the EVP interface.

Share:
For your environment

Are you exposed to this one?

Mallory correlates every CVE against your assets, your vendors, and active adversary campaigns. Know which vulnerabilities matter for you, not just which ones are loud.

ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation allows forgery of authenticated empty messages with attacker-controlled AAD. This breaks the integrity guarantees expected from AES-SIV and AES-GCM-SIV for zero-length ciphertext cases. In affected applications, forged messages may be accepted as authentic even though the attacker does not know the encryption key. For AES-GCM-SIV this is directly exploitable in a single shot; for AES-SIV the attack is more constrained and depends on decryption-context reuse without key reset. The issue is described as low severity because it does not affect OpenSSL's standard protocol implementations and requires application-specific use of these AEAD modes through EVP.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

Until patched versions are deployed, avoid accepting or processing empty-ciphertext messages with AES-SIV or AES-GCM-SIV through the affected EVP decryption paths. Applications should not skip ciphertext update handling solely because ciphertext length is zero, should reject zero-length ciphertext messages where protocol-compatible, and should avoid reusing AES-SIV decryption contexts without resetting the key. Exposure can also be reduced by avoiding custom protocols that rely on these modes in vulnerable OpenSSL versions.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade to an OpenSSL release containing the vendor fix from the June 9, 2026 security updates. The supporting content indicates fixes were issued in OpenSSL 4.0.1, 3.6.3, 3.5.7, 3.4.6, and 3.0.21, with downstream vendors also shipping patched packages. Applications using AES-SIV or AES-GCM-SIV through the EVP interface should review their decryption logic for zero-length ciphertext handling and ensure patched libraries are deployed.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
FreebsdFreebsdapplication
OpenSSL Software FoundationOpensslapplication

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

The version that knows your environment.

This page is what’s public. Mallory adds the parts that aren’t: which of your assets are affected, which adversaries are exploiting it right now, which detections to deploy, and what to do tonight.
Exposure mapping

Query your assets running an affected version, and investigate the blast radius.

Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity15

Community discussion across Reddit, Mastodon, and other social sources.