SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityAnalyzed

CVE-2026-33248

Prior to versions 2.11.15 and 2.12.6, when using mTLS for client identity, with `verify_and_map` to derive a NATS identity from the client certificate's Subject DN, certain patterns of RDN would not be correctly enforced, allowing for authentication…

MEDIUM 4.2EPSS 0.15%

Does this matter?

Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.15%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.

Description

NATS-Server is a High-Performance server for NATS.io, a cloud and edge native messaging system. Prior to versions 2.11.15 and 2.12.6, when using mTLS for client identity, with `verify_and_map` to derive a NATS identity from the client certificate's Subject DN, certain patterns of RDN would not be correctly enforced, allowing for authentication bypass. This does require a valid certificate from a CA already trusted for client certificates, and `DN` naming patterns which the NATS maintainers consider highly unlikely. So this is an unlikely attack. Nonetheless, administrators who have been very sophisticated in their `DN` construction patterns might conceivably be impacted. Versions 2.11.15 and 2.12.6 contain a fix. As a workaround, developers should review their CA issuing practices.

CVSS 3.1
4.2 MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
EPSS
0.15% probability · 4th percentile
Public exploits
None in Exploit-DB
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-287, CWE-295
Affected
linuxfoundation/nats-server
Source
security-advisories@github.com
EPSS trend
0%3%5%26 October 2026: 0.15%26 October 202626 October 2026

EPSS 0.1% 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.