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UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityAwaiting Analysis

CVE-2026-16317

Missing validation of the outer content_type byte on TLS 1.3 encrypted records in s2n-tls allows an active man-in-the-middle to silently discard individual application data records without either endpoint detecting the modification.

HIGH 8.3EPSS 0.25%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.25%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

Missing validation of the outer content_type byte on TLS 1.3 encrypted records in s2n-tls allows an active man-in-the-middle to silently discard individual application data records without either endpoint detecting the modification. RFC 8446 Section 5.2 requires that the outer content_type of all encrypted TLS 1.3 records must be application_data (0x17). The s2n-tls AEAD implementation hardcodes this value in the additional authenticated data rather than using the actual wire byte, so the outer content_type is not covered by the authentication tag. This enables selective suppression of application data. In HTTP pipelining scenarios, dropping a TLS record containing an HTTP request can cause request/response desynchronization, where subsequent responses are delivered to the wrong requests. In write-heavy workloads, a dropped record containing a write request can result in undetectable data loss when the client interprets a subsequent success response as confirmation of the dropped write. All TLS 1.3 connections are affected. Both TLS clients and servers are affected. TLS 1.2 and QUIC connections are not affected. We recommend you upgrade s2n-tls to version v1.7.6

CVSS 4.0
8.3 HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:L/SC:N/SI:L/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
EPSS
0.25% probability · 16th percentile
Public exploits
None in Exploit-DB
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-354
Source
ff89ba41-3aa1-4d27-914a-91399e9639e5
EPSS trend
0%3%5%26 October 2026: 0.25%26 October 202626 October 2026

EPSS 0.2% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.