Medium · published June 25, 2026
Partial-chain certificate verification may accept chains that terminate at a peer-supplied, untrusted intermediate certificate rather than a trusted anchor. An attacker could present a chain that ends at an intermediate they control and have it accepted as valid. This affects the OpenSSL compatibility certificate-path-building path (wolfSSL_X509_verify_cert / X509_STORE, OPENSSL_EXTRA) when the X509_V_FLAG_PARTIAL_CHAIN verify flag is enabled.