Vulnerability in Botan Project

CVE-2018-20187

A side-channel issue was discovered in Botan before 2.9.0. An attacker capable of precisely measuring the time taken for ECC key generation may be able to derive information about the high bits of the secret key, as the function to derive the public point from the secret scalar uses an unblinded Montgomery ladder whose loop iteration count depends on the bitlength of the secret. This issue affects only key generation, not ECDSA signatures or ECDH key agreement.

EPSS: 0.015 (72.1th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.9 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2018-20187?
CVE-2018-20187 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Botan Project, classified under CWE-320. CVSS score: 5.9/10. Published 2019-03-08.
How severe is CVE-2018-20187?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.9 out of 10.