Low [CVE-2026-75803] AEAD forgeries possible with empty ciphertext in EVP_Cipher

Issue summary: ChaCha20-Poly1305 and AES-OCB decryption with an empty ciphertext can report success without verifying the supplied authentication tag when the operation is finalized by calling the EVP_Cipher() function.

Impact summary: Applications calling EVP_Cipher() on an empty ciphertext and expecting the call to check the AEAD tag may accept forged messages. CWE: CWE-354 (Improper Validation of Integrity Check Value) Description: The EVP_Cipher() API call for AEAD ciphers behaves like a one shot encryption and decryption call.

However for AES-OCB and ChaCha20-Poly1305 ciphers it skipped the AEAD tag verification when an empty ciphertext was passed to the function. The callers of this function might believe that a successful return indicates a valid AEAD tag for these ciphers, even when that has not truly been validated in this case.

FIPS impact: no The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, and 3.0 are not affected by this CVE as the affected algorithms are not FIPS approved and thus not implemented in the FIPS module. This allows remote attackers to submit forged messages that affected applications incorrectly accept as valid.

Red Hat rates this as Low since exploitation requires a rare API misuse pattern using EVP_Cipher() with empty ChaCha20-Poly1305 or AES-OCB ciphertexts.