CVE-2026-103603

Unbounded HSS public key level count allows huge array allocation during signature verification

State
Published
Severity
8.7 High
Published
Oct 2, 2026
Updated
Oct 2, 2026
Reserved
Sep 30, 2026

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Description

Memory allocation with excessive size value in the HSS/LMS signature code (HssPublicKeyParameters, HssSignature) in Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. bc-csharp before 2.7.0 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker who can supply both an HSS public key and a signature to cause a denial of service through memory exhaustion via a public key encoding with an excessive level count, because the level count L read when parsing an HSS public key was not checked against the RFC 8554 maximum of 8, and signature parsing then allocated an array of L - 1 entries before reading any further signature data. A single verification can commit up to about 17 GB of memory or fail with an OutOfMemoryException.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
4.08.7 HighCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:Nbcorg

Weaknesses

  • CWE-789 Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value

Affected Products

ProductVersions
bc-csharpLegion of the Bouncy Castle Inc.
  • before 2.7.0Affected

References

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