Password-based KDF cost parameters honoured unbounded from untrusted input across the remaining PBE entry points (Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. BC-JAVA)

CVE-2026-17508
MEDIUM 5.3

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.42 % · percentile 36 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
bcorg
NVD status
Awaiting Analysis

Description

In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, several password-based key derivation entry points ran the KDF with cost parameters taken from the untrusted input being processed, without bounding them, so a small input could dictate an arbitrary amount of work before any password or integrity check could reject it. The affected paths are the RFC 9579 PBMAC1 MAC calculator builders, which took the PBKDF2 iteration count and derived-key length straight out of PBMAC1Params (JcePBMac1CalculatorBuilder, and PKCS12PBEUtils.createPBMac1Calculator reached from PKCS12PfxPdu.isMacValid); the scrypt parallelization parameter p in the PKCS#8 and PKCS#12 cost guards, which bounded only the cost parameter N and the block size r even though the scratch buffer scales with r times p, so the configured memory ceiling could be evaded entirely; the raw JCA PBKDF2 provider (org.bouncycastle.jcajce.provider.symmetric.PBEPBKDF2); and the bcrypt round count read from an encrypted OpenSSH v1 private key's own kdfoptions. Each now bounds the parameter before deriving, in line with the caps already applied elsewhere in the tree, with the OpenSSH round count configurable through the new org.bouncycastle.openssh.max_rounds property. This completes the bounding begun in 1.85 for the PKCS#8 / PBES2 decryptors (CVE-2026-15055). This issue also affects Bouncy Castle for Java LTS before 2.73.13, and Bouncy Castle for Java FIPS (BC-FJA) before bcpkix-fips 1.0.13 (1.0.X series), 2.0.13 (2.0.X series) and 2.1.13 (2.1.X series).

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-770 — Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 5.3CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/U:Amberbcorg
CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 5.3CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/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:AmberNVD · 91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630 (Secondary)

European references

CERT-FR advisories

Affected products

ProductVersions
Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. · BC-JAVAaffected 0 < 1.86
Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. · BC-JAVAaffected 0 < 1.86
Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. · BC-LTS-JAVAaffected 2.73.0 < 2.73.13
Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. · BC-LTS-JAVAaffected 2.73.0 < 2.73.13
Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. · BC-FJAaffected 1.0.0 < 1.0.13 ; affected 2.0.0 < 2.0.13 ; affected 2.1.0 < 2.1.13

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
CERT-FR (ANSSI)Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD