CVE-2026-119186: Forge: AES-GCM authentication bypass via unvalidated tagLength option

October 30, 2026

The AES-GCM mode in forge.cipher does not validate the tagLength option passed to start(). With a tagLength of 0 or a value that converts to 0 (such as null, false, ’’ or ‘0’), the authentication tag is empty, and decipher.finish() returns true for any ciphertext and additional data when the supplied tag is empty or missing. Fixed in node-forge 1.4.1.

References

github.com/advisories/GHSA-5cwg-6vw7-rj6p
github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/commit/236845d96c71207259f91638d0138bba8e2fd624
github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/releases/tag/v1.4.1
github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/security/advisories/GHSA-5cwg-6vw7-rj6p
nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-119186

Code Behaviors & Features

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