CVE-2026-13734
Received
Received - Intake
WireGuard VPN Replay Attack in Zephyr OS
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-13734, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-08-28
Last updated on: 2026-08-28
Assigner: Zephyr Project
Description
Description
Zephyr's WireGuard VPN data-plane receive handler wg_process_data_message() in subsys/net/lib/wireguard/wg_crypto.c validated the anti-replay counter too late. After AEAD decryption of a MESSAGE_TRANSPORT_DATA packet succeeded, the code committed several peer-state changes — update_peer_addr() (endpoint roaming update), the keypair->last_rx/peer->last_rx liveness timers, and keypair_update() (promote next→current and destroy the previous keypair) — and only afterward called wg_check_replay(). On a replayed packet the replay check returned -EINVAL, but none of the preceding mutations were rolled back.
The AEAD tag authenticates content but not freshness, so a replayed-but-authentic transport packet decrypts correctly. An attacker who captures one valid ciphertext off the wire (an on-path or shared-medium observer) can re-inject it from an arbitrary spoofed source address. Reaching the handler requires no credentials: it is driven directly from inbound UDP datagrams via the dispatch in subsys/net/lib/wireguard/wg.c.
Because the state mutations committed before the replay check, the replay repoints the peer endpoint to the attacker-chosen source address (roaming hijack), redirecting the victim's subsequent outbound tunnel traffic until the legitimate peer's next packet re-corrects it; it also prematurely destroys the previous keypair and refreshes the RX liveness timer. The tunnel payload stays encrypted under the session keypair, so this is an integrity/availability impact (traffic redirection and session disruption), not payload disclosure. The fix moves wg_check_replay() to immediately after a successful decrypt, before any peer-state mutation, matching the WireGuard specification and the Linux reference implementation.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| zephyr | wireguard | * |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-294 | A capture-replay flaw exists when the design of the product makes it possible for a malicious user to sniff network traffic and bypass authentication by replaying it to the server in question to the same effect as the original message (or with minor changes). |
