CVE-2026-53604

nebula-mesh: CA private key not zeroized on web mobile-bundle error paths

State
Published
Severity
7.1 High
Published
Sep 4, 2026
Updated
Sep 8, 2026
Reserved
Jun 9, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

nebula-mesh is a self-hosted control plane for Slack Nebula mesh VPN. Prior to version 0.3.8, the web handler renderMobileBundle passes the real *pki.CAResolver directly into mobilebundle.Build. Inside Build, resolver.LoadByID decrypts the CA's ed25519 private key into a *pki.CAManager, but Build never calls CAManager.Wipe() on any return path. As a result, when a mobile-bundle request goes through the web UI and Build returns — especially on error (missing network, invalid prefix, DB error, signing failure) — the plaintext CA private key remains on the Go heap, unwiped, until garbage collection. An attacker able to read process memory (core dump, swap, memory-scraping) can recover the CA signing key, which would allow minting arbitrary host certificates for the mesh. The API handler already does this correctly: it loads the CAManager, defer caMgr.Wipe(), and wraps it in caManagerResolver. Only the web path is affected. This issue has been patched in version 0.3.8.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
4.07.1 HighCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:NGitHub_M

Weaknesses

  • CWE-212 Improper Removal of Sensitive Information Before Storage or Transfer
  • CWE-316 Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information in Memory

Affected Products

ProductVersions
nebula-meshforgekeep
  • < 0.3.8Affected

References

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