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

MITRE NVD CVE.ORG JSON API

Summary

CVECVE-2026-103603
StatePUBLISHED
Assignerbcorg
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-10-02 08:17:00 UTC
Updated2026-10-02 08:17:00 UTC
DescriptionMemory 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.

Risk And Classification

Primary CVSS: v4.0 8.7 HIGH from 91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Problem Types: CWE-789 | CWE-789 CWE-789 Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value

VersionSourceTypeScoreSeverityVector
4.091579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630Secondary8.7HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/C...
4.0CNACVSS8.7HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

CVSS v4.0 Breakdown

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Attack Requirements
None
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Sub Conf.
None
Sub Integrity
None
Sub Availability
None

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Legion Of The Bouncy Castle Inc. Bc-csharp affected 2.7.0 semver Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
github.com/bcgit/bc-csharp/commit/f47ad47c7b5745b53d3f9ac711a5a419a272a5d7 91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630 github.com
github.com/bcgit/bc-csharp/wiki/CVE-2026-103603 91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630 github.com
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis

Vendor Comments And Credit

Discovery Credit

CNA: Discovered by Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, and triaged by the Anthropic security team in collaboration with Anthropic Research. (en)

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