CVE-2026-103603: Unbounded HSS public key level count allows huge array allocation during signature verification

Published Oct 2, 2026
·
Updated

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.

Affected Software

1 affected component
Legion of the Bouncy Castle Bouncy Castle C#<2.7.0

Event History

Oct 2, 2026
CVE Published
via MITRE·07:10 AM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·07:10 AM
DescriptionWeakness
Data Sourced
via NVD·08:17 AM
DescriptionSeverityWeakness

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