CVE-2024-14041
MediumCVSS 5.9Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk19th percentile - higher than 19% of all known CVEs
Summary
In Bouncy Castle for Java (versions 1.73 to 1.78), three ML-KEM (CRYSTALS-Kyber) routines divide polynomial coefficients by the modulus q, allowing an attacker who measures the timing of many decapsulations with the same private key to recover that key. This affects Poly.toMsg (KyberSlash1) and ciphertext compression functions (KyberSlash2).
Risk Assessment
An attacker can recover the long-term private key, enabling decryption of all previously and subsequently intercepted messages, compromising communication confidentiality.
Recommendation
Immediately update Bouncy Castle to version 1.78 or later, which fixes this vulnerability. Consider using alternative Kyber implementations not vulnerable to timing attacks.
Other vulnerabilities in Bouncy Castle
See all- CVE-2026-58062Critical
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.85, a Stapled OCSP response is accepted without binding to the checked certificate. This issue also affects LTS before 2.73.12 and FIPS before 2.0.2 (2.0.X series) and 2.1.3 (2.1.X series).
- CVE-2026-8763Critical
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.85, Name Constraints can be bypassed via a trailing dot in rfc822Name and URI. This issue also affects LTS before 2.73.12 and FIPS before appropriate versions.
- CVE-2026-59650Critical
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.85, the MTI/A0 Diffie-Hellman key agreement exponentiates an unvalidated peer value. This issue also affects LTS before 2.73.12.
- CVE-2026-14682High
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.85, a possible Out-of-Memory (OOM) condition exists due to unbounded up-front allocation on a definite-length read. This issue also affects LTS and FIPS versions.
- CVE-2026-13586High
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.85, the PKCS#12 MAC and bag-decryption KDF iteration-count bound can lead to DoS. This issue also affects LTS before 2.73.12 and BC-FJA before specific versions.
- CVE-2026-13506High
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.85, a Lazy ASN.1 sequence forces resetting the nesting-depth guard. This issue also affects LTS and FIPS versions.
- CVE-2026-12860Medium
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.85, RSA PKCS#1 signature verification skips the last two hash bytes in the NULL-omitted path. This issue also affects LTS before 2.73.12.
- CVE-2026-12852High
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.85, the MLS wire decoder allocates attacker-declared opaque length before bounds check.
- CVE-2026-12817High
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.85, OpenPGP AEAD decryption skips the final tag on chunk-aligned data. This issue also affects LTS and FIPS versions.
- CVE-2026-12816High
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.85, the IESEngine in stream mode allows MAC forgery via length-dependent KDF split. This issue also affects LTS before 2.73.12.
Original NVD description (English source)
In Bouncy Castle for Java from 1.73 to before 1.78, three ML-KEM (CRYSTALS-Kyber) routines divided secret-derived polynomial coefficients by the modulus q: Poly.toMsg, which decodes the decrypted message, and the ciphertext compression routines Poly.compressPoly and PolyVec.compressPolyVec. An attacker able to measure the timing of a large number of decapsulations performed with the same long-term private key can recover that key. These are the KyberSlash1 (Poly.toMsg) and KyberSlash2 (ciphertext compression) divisions. Compression performed during encapsulation operates on values that become the public ciphertext and is not affected.