CVE-2026-9697 Vulnerability Analysis & Exploit Details

CVE-2026-9697
Vulnerability Scoring

7.4
/10
Very High Risk

Highly exploitable, CVE-2026-9697 poses a critical security risk that could lead to severe breaches.

Attack Complexity Details

  • Attack Complexity: High
    Exploits require significant effort and special conditions.
  • Attack Vector: Network
    Vulnerability is exploitable over a network without physical access.
  • Privileges Required: None
    No privileges are required for exploitation.
  • Scope: Unchanged
    Exploit remains within the originally vulnerable component.
  • User Interaction: None
    No user interaction is necessary for exploitation.

CVE-2026-9697 Details

Status: Received on 17 Jun 2026, 18:18 UTC

Published on: 17 Jun 2026, 18:18 UTC

CVSS Release: version 3

CVSS3 Source

ce714d77-add3-4f53-aff5-83d477b104bb

CVSS3 Type

Secondary

CVSS3 Vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N

CVE-2026-9697 Vulnerability Summary

CVE-2026-9697: Impact: undici's ProxyAgent silently drops the requestTls option when configured with a SOCKS5 proxy URI (socks5:// or socks://). The target HTTPS connection through the SOCKS5 tunnel falls back to Node's default trust store, ignoring user-configured ca, cert, key, rejectUnauthorized, and servername settings. Applications that pin to an internal or corporate CA via requestTls.ca will, when their proxy URI is SOCKS5, get the default Mozilla CA bundle as the trust anchor instead. Any cert signed by any publicly-trusted CA for the target hostname is accepted, breaking the intended pin and enabling MITM read and tamper of the HTTPS exchange. Affected applications are those that use undici's ProxyAgent (or Socks5ProxyAgent directly) with SOCKS5 AND rely on requestTls for TLS scope restriction. The bug was introduced in undici 7.23.0 when SOCKS5 support was added. Patches: Upgrade to undici v7.28.0 or v8.5.0. Workarounds: No workaround is available within the SOCKS5 path. If a SOCKS5 proxy with TLS scope restriction is required and an upgrade is not yet possible, route the traffic through an HTTP-proxy ProxyAgent instead, where requestTls is honored correctly.

Assessing the Risk of CVE-2026-9697

Access Complexity Graph

The exploitability of CVE-2026-9697 depends on two key factors: attack complexity (the level of effort required to execute an exploit) and privileges required (the access level an attacker needs).

Exploitability Analysis for CVE-2026-9697

CVE-2026-9697 presents a challenge to exploit due to its high attack complexity, but the absence of privilege requirements still makes it a viable target for skilled attackers. A thorough security review is advised.

Understanding AC and PR

A lower complexity and fewer privilege requirements make exploitation easier. Security teams should evaluate these aspects to determine the urgency of mitigation strategies, such as patch management and access control policies.

Attack Complexity (AC) measures the difficulty in executing an exploit. A high AC means that specific conditions must be met, making an attack more challenging, while a low AC means the vulnerability can be exploited with minimal effort.

Privileges Required (PR) determine the level of system access necessary for an attack. Vulnerabilities requiring no privileges are more accessible to attackers, whereas high privilege requirements limit exploitation to authorized users with elevated access.

CVSS Score Breakdown Chart

Above is the CVSS Sub-score Breakdown for CVE-2026-9697, illustrating how Base, Impact, and Exploitability factors combine to form the overall severity rating. A higher sub-score typically indicates a more severe or easier-to-exploit vulnerability.

CIA Impact Analysis

Below is the Impact Analysis for CVE-2026-9697, showing how Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability might be affected if the vulnerability is exploited. Higher values usually signal greater potential damage.

  • Confidentiality: High
    Exploiting CVE-2026-9697 can result in unauthorized access to sensitive data, severely compromising data privacy.
  • Integrity: High
    CVE-2026-9697 could allow unauthorized modifications to data, potentially affecting system reliability and trust.
  • Availability: None
    CVE-2026-9697 does not impact system availability.

CVE-2026-9697 References

External References

CWE Common Weakness Enumeration

CWE-295

CAPEC Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification

  • Creating a Rogue Certification Authority Certificate CAPEC-459 An adversary exploits a weakness resulting from using a hashing algorithm with weak collision resistance to generate certificate signing requests (CSR) that contain collision blocks in their "to be signed" parts. The adversary submits one CSR to be signed by a trusted certificate authority then uses the signed blob to make a second certificate appear signed by said certificate authority. Due to the hash collision, both certificates, though different, hash to the same value and so the signed blob works just as well in the second certificate. The net effect is that the adversary's second X.509 certificate, which the Certification Authority has never seen, is now signed and validated by that Certification Authority.
  • Signature Spoofing by Improper Validation CAPEC-475 An adversary exploits a cryptographic weakness in the signature verification algorithm implementation to generate a valid signature without knowing the key.

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