CVE-2026-13735

Technical Description

Zephyr's WireGuard implementation in subsys/net/lib/wireguard/wg_crypto.c mishandled keepalive packets. In wg_process_data_message(), any type-4 transport-data message whose payload was exactly 16 bytes (an empty plaintext plus a bare Poly1305 tag, i.e. a keepalive) was accepted and returned immediately, before wg_decrypt_packet() was ever called. The Poly1305 authentication tag was therefore never verified; the only preceding gates were a cleartext receiver-index lookup (get_peer_keypair_for_index() on the attacker-supplied data_hdr->receiver) and a non-cryptographic keypair validity/expiry check.

The path is reachable entirely from the network: inbound UDP on the WireGuard port is dispatched by wg_input() to handle_transport_data() and then wg_process_data_message(). The 32-bit receiver index is transmitted in cleartext in WireGuard handshake and data messages, so an on-path observer learns it directly and an off-path attacker can brute-force it against the UDP port. Given an active

Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories, patches, and mitigation guidance. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

References