All vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-103603

bc-csharp: Unbounded HSS public key level count allows huge array allocation during signature verification

Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. bc-csharp
CVSS
8.7High
ExploitationNo known exploitationNot in CISA KEV, which does not prove it is unexploitedCISA KEV
Exploit odds (EPSS)0.41%Chance of exploitation activity in the next 30 days, higher than 34% of CVEs. Scored 23 Oct 2026FIRST EPSS
Fixed in2.7.0Fixed versionCVE List
Published2 Oct 2026Updated 2 Oct 2026CVE List

What fixes it

A fixed version on one release line is not the upgrade target for every line. Check your exact version and any vendor backports.

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.

Text from CVE List

Affected versions 1

  • bc-csharpaffected: all versions before 2.7.0CVE List

References 2