#1108963 v2.6.3 has a curious bug: AEAD and descrypt errors at key expiration

Package:
openvpn
Source:
openvpn
Description:
virtual private network daemon
Submitter:
grin
Date:
2026-07-05 21:31:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#1108963#5
Date:
2025-07-08 16:39:59 UTC
From:
To:
Somewhere between 2.5.1 and 2.6.3 there manifested a bug where a client
can lose the connection around session key expiration, which is not
detected by the server, which in turn cause a 60 seconds connection
gap until resynchonisation. It seems to be only dependent on the server
version.

The effect is that the client may log a large amnount of

AEAD Decrypt error: cipher final failed

errors, or in case of kernel module:

ovpn_decrypt_one: error during decryption for peer 0, key-id 0: -74
ovpn_aead_decrypt: decrypt failed: -74

errors when the server have expired the key, and it stays dead
until server timeout (usually 60 seconds) expires and triggers a
resync. From then on everything works fine until the next expiration.

This seems to be fixed in v2.6.14 server, which is not in stable, nor
in the backports. It probably should be.

Thanks!

#1108963#12
Date:
2026-07-05 21:20:05 UTC
From:
To:
Closing since both bookworm and trixie have fixed versions.

Bernhard