CVE-2026-25998: strongMan vulnerable to private credential recovery due to key and counter reuse
strongswan · strongMan
Affected: strongswan strongMan · Exploitation: unlikely (under 1%)
Not in CyberSIXT coverage yet: no article names this CVE. This page shows the public record.
Higher than 28% of scored CVEs
DescriptionCVE.org
strongMan is a management interface for strongSwan, an OpenSource IPsec-based VPN. When storing credentials in the database (private keys, EAP secrets), strongMan encrypts the corresponding database fields. So far it used AES in CTR mode with a global database key. Together with an initialization vector (IV), a key stream is generated to encrypt the data in the database fields. But because strongMan did not generate individual IVs, every database field was encrypted using the same key stream. An attacker that has access to the database can use this to recover the encrypted credentials. In particular, because certificates, which have to be considered public information, are also encrypted using the same mechanism, an attacker can directly recover a large chunk of the key stream, which allows them to decrypt basically all other secrets especially ECDSA private keys and EAP secrets, which are usually a lot shorter. Version 0.2.0 fixes the issue by switching to AES-GCM-SIV encryption with a random nonce and an individually derived encryption key, using HKDF, for each encrypted value. Database migrations are provided to automatically re-encrypt all credentials.
Affected products1
From the CVE record. A product or version that is not listed is unknown, not unaffected.
- strongswan · strongMan< 0.2.0
On the Atlas
Every published CVE is on the CyberSIXT Atlas, grouped by weakness, vendor and month.
- Exploitation
- Unlikely (under 1%). EPSS under 1%, or no score yet.
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Public check
- No public nuclei template
- Vendor
- strongswan
- Published
- February 2026
CoverageNo articles yet
No CyberSIXT article names CVE-2026-25998 yet, so there is no coverage timeline, action brief or change log for it. Everything on this page comes from the public CVE record, CISA KEV, EPSS and the nuclei template index. Search the archive or see the CVEs in the news.