Vulnerability · Published Sep 4, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-53604nebula-mesh: CA private key not zeroized on web mobile-bundle error paths
High 7.1
In plain English
A high-severity security flaw in nebula-mesh from forgekeep. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 8% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
nebula-mesh is a self-hosted control plane for Slack Nebula mesh VPN. Prior to version 0.3.8, the web handler renderMobileBundle passes the real *pki.CAResolver directly into mobilebundle.Build. Inside Build, resolver.LoadByID decrypts the CA's ed25519 private key into a *pki.CAManager, but Build never calls CAManager.Wipe() on any return path. As a result, when a mobile-bundle request goes through the web UI and Build returns — especially on error (missing network, invalid prefix, DB error, signing failure) — the plaintext CA private key remains on the Go heap, unwiped, until garbage collection. An attacker able to read process memory (core dump, swap, memory-scraping) can recover the CA signing key, which would allow minting arbitrary host certificates for the mesh. The API handler already does this correctly: it loads the CAManager, defer caMgr.Wipe(), and wraps it in caManagerResolver. Only the web path is affected. This issue has been patched in version 0.3.8.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/forgekeep/nebula-mesh | 0.3.8 | GO-2026-5984 |
| Go | github.com/forgekeep/nebula-mesh | 0.3.8 | GHSA-2p2f-px33-4vv5 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| forgekeep | nebula-mesh | < 0.3.8 |
Weakness: CWE-212, CWE-316 · Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N