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Medium · 5.9 CVE-2024-36405 EUVD-2024-36062

Control-flow timing leak in Kyber reference implementation when compiled with Clang 15-18 for -Os, -O1 and other options

Published Jun 10, 2024 · Updated Aug 2, 2024 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

liboqs is a C-language cryptographic library that provides implementations of post-quantum cryptography algorithms. A control-flow timing lean has been identified in the reference implementation of the Kyber key encapsulation mechanism when it is compiled with Clang 15-18 for `-Os`, `-O1`, and other compilation options. A proof-of-concept local attack on the reference implementation leaks the entire ML-KEM 512 secret key in ~10 minutes using end-to-end decapsulation timing measurements. The issue has been fixed in version 0.10.1. As a possible workaround, some compiler options may produce vectorized code that does not leak secret information, however relying on these compiler options as a workaround may not be reliable.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
open-quantum-safe liboqs < 0.10.1 —

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
SLES 15 SP6 liboqs 0.12.0-150600.3.3.1 SUSE-SU-2025:0005-1
SLES 15 SP6 oqs-provider 0.7.0-150600.3.3.1 SUSE-SU-2025:0005-1
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
openSUSE Tumbleweed liboqs 0.10.1-1.1 openSUSE-SU-2024:14039-1
openSUSE Leap 15.6 liboqs 0.12.0-150600.3.3.1 SUSE-SU-2025:0005-1
openSUSE Leap 15.6 oqs-provider 0.7.0-150600.3.3.1 SUSE-SU-2025:0005-1

Advisories 2

References