CVE-2026-16317
CVE-2026-16317CVE-2026-16317
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 w
Scoring
| CVSS | 6.5 () |
| Vector | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L |
| Last modified | 2026-07-21 |