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NTAP-20260617-0016 — CVE-2026-45446 OpenSSL Vulnerability in NetApp Products

Published 2026-06-17 · Updated 2026-10-07 · Status: Interim · Exploitation: Public · Severity: MEDIUM 4.8 · ONTAP affected: Yes

Official advisory: NTAP-20260617-0016 on security.netapp.com ↗. Affected versions, fixed releases, and workarounds live there — this page is a summary.

Product family: Active IQ Unified Manager · NetApp Console / BlueXP · SolidFire / NetApp HCI · ONTAP · Brocade SAN firmware · Other NetApp products | ONTAP-relevant | highest CVSS: 4.8

CVEs in this advisory

CVE-2026-45446 — MEDIUM · CVSS 4.8 · site index

What the CVE records say

CVE-2026-45446 — Issue summary: The implementations of AES-SIV (RFC 5297) and AES-GCM-SIV (RFC 8452) mishandle the authentication of AAD (Additional Authenticated Data) with an empty ciphertext allowing a forgery of such messages. Impact summary: An attacker can forge empty messages with arbitrary AAD to the victim's application using these ciphers. AES-SIV (RFC 5297) and AES-GCM-SIV (RFC 8452) are nonce-misuse-resistant AEAD modes: they accept a key, nonce, optional AAD (bytes that are authenticated but not encrypted), and plaintext, and produces ciphertext plus a 16-byte tag. On decrypt, `EVP_DecryptFinal_ex()` is documented to return success only if the tag is verified succesfully. In OpenSSL's provider implementation of these ciphers, the expected tag is computed only when decryption function is invoked with non-empty data. If the caller supplies AAD and then calls `EVP_DecryptFinal_ex()` without invocation of the ciphertext update, which can happen when the received ciphertext length is zero, the tag is never recalculated and still holds its all-zeros value. When AES-GCM-SIV is used, an attacker who sends arbitrary AAD, empty ciphertext, and all-zeros tag passes authentication under any key they do not know, single-shot. When AES-SIV is used, for mounting the attack it's necessary for the application to reuse the decryption context without resetting the key. AES-SIV is implemented since OpenSSL 3.0. AES-GCM-SIV is implemented since OpenSSL 3.2. No protocols implemented in OpenSSL itself (TLS/CMS/PKCS7/HPKE/QUIC) support either AES-GCM-SIV or AES-SIV. To mount an attack, the applications must implement their own protocol and use the EVP interface. Also they must skip the ciphertext update when a message with an empty ciphertext arrives. The FIPS modules in 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, and 3.0 are not affected by this issue, as these algorithms are not FIPS approved and the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

Impact

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could lead to disclosure of sensitive information or addition or modification of data.

Affected products

Active IQ Unified Manager for Linux
Active IQ Unified Manager for VMware vSphere
NetApp Console Agent Container (adc)
NetApp Console Agent Container (cbs)
NetApp Console Agent Container (cbs-backend)
NetApp HCI Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) - H610S
ONTAP Select Deploy administration utility
Brocade Fabric Operating System Firmware
Brocade SAN Navigator (SANnav)
Cloud Volumes ONTAP Mediator
Global File Cache
NetApp Console Agent Container (alert-service-client)

References

What to do

Check the affected products listed above against the official advisory's affected-versions table — that is where the exact ONTAP 9 release, ONTAP tool, or management product versions are named.
If affected and a fixed release exists, plan the upgrade — see the ONTAP upgrade runbook.
If exploitation is listed as "active", treat remediation as urgent and review exposure (management LIFs, ONTAP S3, SnapMirror endpoints).
Harden in parallel: security hardening baseline and ransomware protection on ONTAP.