Vulnerability · Published Oct 30, 2026 · Assigned by fedora

CVE-2026-115683epiphany: TLS certificate warning bypass via race in tlsErrorPage message handler

Medium 6.8

In plain English

A medium-severity security flaw in Epiphany from GNOME. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 13% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS 3.1)6.8Medium
Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 87.3% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: poc
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

A race condition in Epiphany allows a malicious website to bypass the TLS/SSL certificate warning page. Epiphany registers the main-world script message handler "tlsErrorPage" so its internal TLS error page can implement "Accept Risk and Proceed". The handler was registered immediately before loading the error page, leaving a brief window where the previously loaded untrusted origin could still call window.webkit.messageHandlers.tlsErrorPage.postMessage(...). The only authorization check compares a numeric WebKit page id that increments predictably; an attacker can burst-guess ids and approve a certificate exception with no user click. If a victim visits malicious site A that redirects to site B with an invalid certificate, site A can, for a few milliseconds, disable TLS certificate error warnings for host B until Epiphany is restarted, enabling man-in-the-middle or site spoofing for that host. Upstream report: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/epiphany/-/work_items/2978 Proof of concept: https://beford.net/poc/ssl_poc.html Fix: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/epiphany/-/merge_requests/2245 (register handlers on LOAD_COMMITTED). No fixed release tagged yet; reporter and maintainer describe all current versions as affected. Maintainer notes the risky registration timing dates to commit 1da1caed (Epiphany 45.x era); before that the handlers were always registered and similarly reachable from web content.

Affected packages & fixed versions

EcosystemPackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian:12epiphany-browserno fix listedDEBIAN-CVE-2026-115683
Debian:13epiphany-browserno fix listedDEBIAN-CVE-2026-115683
Debian:14epiphany-browser51.2-1DEBIAN-CVE-2026-115683
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSepiphany-browserno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2026-115683
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSepiphany-browserno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2026-115683
Ubuntu:26.04:LTSepiphany-browserno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2026-115683
Ubuntu:26.10epiphany-browserno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2026-115683

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
GNOME Epiphany 0 – before 51.1

Weakness: CWE-367 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

References