A side-channel issue was discovered in Botan before 2.9.0.
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.
- Published
- Mar 8, 2019
- Updated
- Jun 16, 2026
- EPSS
- 1.5% · 74th percentile
- CWE
- CWE-320
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Report tools
Action score
23
Monitor
Low priority for now.
- CVSS
- 23 / 40 · 5.9 / 10
- CISA KEV
- 0 / 30 · Not listed
- EPSS
- 0 / 30 · 1.5%
Affected systems
| Vendor | Product | CPE |
|---|---|---|
| botan project | botan | cpe:2.3:a:botan_project:botan |
Affected versions
NVD version ranges (for catalog products). Add the product to your stack with a version and matching uses these.
- botan project botanbefore 2.9.0
Package-level exposure
OSV and GitHub Advisory data: ecosystem, package and range. SBOM matching uses this table.
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine:v3.11 | botan | before 2.9.0-r0 | 2.9.0-r0 |
| Debian:12 | botan | before 2.9.0-2 | 2.9.0-2 |
| openSUSE:Tumbleweed | Botan | before 2.18.1-1.3 | 2.18.1-1.3 |
Same product
botan project: all recordsOther highest-scoring records for the same primary product.
- CVE-2016-2196Heap-based buffer overflow in the P-521 reduction function in Botan 1.11.x before 1.11.27 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of servi41Plan
- CVE-2016-2195Integer overflow in the PointGFp constructor in Botan before 1.10.11 and 1.11.x before 1.11.27 allows remote attackers to overwrite memory a41Plan
- CVE-2021-24115In Botan before 2.17.3, constant-time computations are not used for certain decoding and encoding operations (base32, base58, base64, and he40Plan
- CVE-2016-9132In Botan 1.8.0 through 1.11.33, when decoding BER data an integer overflow could occur, which would cause an incorrect length field to be co40Plan
- CVE-2018-9127Botan 2.2.0 - 2.4.0 (fixed in 2.5.0) improperly handled wildcard certificates and could accept certain certificates as valid for hostnames w39Monitor
- CVE-2017-2801A programming error exists in a way Randombit Botan cryptographic library version 2.0.1 implements x500 string comparisons which could lead 39Monitor
Remediation
Which version to upgrade to
Fix versions compiled from the vendor, package registries and Microsoft. Verify the vendor's note before upgrading.
| Product / package | Fixed version | Source |
|---|---|---|
| alpine:botan | 2.9.0-r0 · Alpine:v3.11 | Package registry (OSV) |
| debian:botan | 2.9.0-2 · Debian:12 | Package registry (OSV) |
| opensuse:Botan | 2.18.1-1.3 · openSUSE:Tumbleweed | Package registry (OSV) |
Exploit status
No known public exploit
No public exploit has been observed yet. That doesn't mean you're safe, only that the bar is a little higher.
Research context
For pentesters and researchers: attack profile, score disagreement, timeline, patch commits, credits, variant and chain candidates, bug bounty scope. All derived from existing data; no exploit code.
Timeline
From publication to today: proof of concept, Metasploit module, CISA KEV and fix record. Dates are as reported by the sources.
No dated events beyond publication.
FIRST EPSS daily score; only changes of 0.01 or more are recorded (step chart).
Patch and commit links
Commit, PR and diff links among the references. A starting point for patch-diffing and variant hunting; fixes, not exploits.
No commit or PR link among the references.
Credits
All researchersFinders, reporters and analysts named in the CNA record. Click a name for that researcher’s other records.
No credits in the CNA record.
Variant candidates
Same product, same weakness class, within 18 months. If the patch missed the root cause, the sibling bug is here.
No nightly-computed relations.
Chain candidates
An authentication bypass and a privilege-requiring bug in the same product, published close together: combined they may become an unauthenticated path.
—
Bug bounty scope
No known public program.
Source: bounty-targets-data (public HackerOne, Bugcrowd, Intigriti, YesWeHack listings).
Technical details
Attack conditions
- Anyone who can reach it over the internet can trigger it.
- No account or password is required.
- No user action is required.
- Special conditions such as timing or configuration are required.
If successful
- Confidentiality
- high · data can be read
- Integrity
- none
- Availability
- none
- Attack vector
- Network
- Attack complexity
- High
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality impact
- High
- Integrity impact
- None
- Availability impact
- None
Weakness class (CWE)
CWE-320 · Key Management ErrorsCVSS vector
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
nvd-primary
Attack context
MITRE CAPEC attack patterns and ATT&CK techniques for this weakness class (CWE). A starting point for detection rules and threat hunting.
MITRE has no CAPEC/ATT&CK mapping for this CWE.
Noroxi analysis
No Noroxi analysis for this record yet
We don't hand-write analysis for all 385,000+ vulnerabilities; that wouldn't be honest. For notable, high-impact vulnerabilities our team writes the mechanism, detection and remediation steps.
We use this product, ask for helpChange log
- Fix✗ → ✓
For records you follow, these changes also arrive as notifications. →
References
Vendor advisories and official records. Exploit/PoC links are deliberately left out.