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Medium

Observable Differences in Behavior to Error Inputs in Bouncy Castle

  • Disclosed: 22.04.2021
  • Updated: 11.10.2026 12:21

In Legion of the Bouncy Castle BC before 1.55 and BC-FJA before 1.0.2, attackers can obtain sensitive information about a private exponent because of Observable Differences in Behavior to Error Inputs. This occurs in org.bouncycastle.crypto.encodings.OAEPEncoding. Sending invalid ciphertext that decrypts to a short payload in the OAEP Decoder could result in the throwing of an early exception, potentially leaking some information about the private exponent of the RSA private key performing the encryption.

Affected software

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PlatformPackageVulnerable versionsFixed in
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.bouncycastle:bc-fips < 1.0.2 1.0.2
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk15on < 1.61 1.61
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk16 < 1.61 1.61
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 < 1.61 1.61
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15 < 1.61 1.61
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15on < 1.61 1.61
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15to18 < 1.61 1.61
Java / Kotlin (Maven) org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk16 < 1.61 1.61

References

CVSS score 5.3/10
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
Weakness (CWE)
CWE-203
Platform
Java / Kotlin (Maven)
Package
org.bouncycastle:bc-fips, org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk15on, org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk16
Disclosed
22.04.2021
Updated
11.10.2026 12:21

Sources and licenses

OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-72m5-fvvv-55m6 - CC BY 4.0

Vulnerability history: org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14

All published vulnerabilities of this package (Java / Kotlin (Maven)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.

All (26) in the archive
Total entries
26
First → latest
10.2018 04.2026
Without a fix
0
Exploited in attacks
0

Severity breakdown

  • Critical 1
  • High 10
  • Medium 14
  • Low 1

Disclosures per year

Severity:
  1. Bouncy Castle for Java GOST 28147 CTR mode reuses keystream after 255 blocks
    Critical · 7.5 CVE-2025-14813 >= 1.59, <= 1.80.1, >= 1.82, < 1.84, = 1.81.0 1.84
  2. Bouncy Castle Has Covert Timing Channel Vulnerability
    High CVE-2026-5598 >= 1.81, < 1.81.1 1.81.1
  3. Logic error in Legion of the Bouncy Castle BC Java
    High · 8.1 CVE-2020-28052 >= 1.65, < 1.67 1.67
  4. Observable Differences in Behavior to Error Inputs in Bouncy Castle this entry
    Medium · 5.3 CVE-2020-26939 < 1.61 1.61
  5. Out-of-Memory Error in Bouncy Castle Crypto
    High · 7.5 CVE-2019-17359 >= 1.63, < 1.64 1.64
  6. In Bouncy Castle JCE Provider the DHIES implementation allowed the use of ECB mode
    High · 7.4 CVE-2016-1000344 < 1.56 1.56
  7. In Bouncy Castle JCE Provider the ECIES implementation allowed the use of ECB mode
    High · 7.4 CVE-2016-1000352 < 1.56 1.56
  8. In Bouncy Castle JCE Provider the DSA key pair generator generates a weak private key if used with default values
    High · 7.5 CVE-2016-1000343 < 1.56 1.56
  9. In Bouncy Castle JCE Provider ECDSA does not fully validate ASN.1 encoding of signature on verification
    High · 7.5 CVE-2016-1000342 < 1.56 1.56
  10. The Bouncy Castle JCE Provider carry a propagation bug
    High · 7.5 CVE-2016-1000340 >= 1.51, < 1.56 1.56
  11. In Bouncy Castle JCE Provider it is possible to inject extra elements in the sequence making up the signature and still have it validate
    High · 7.5 CVE-2016-1000338 >= 1.38, < 1.56 1.56
  12. Bouncy Castle has a flaw in the Low-level interface to RSA key pair generator
    High · 7.5 CVE-2018-1000180 < 1.60 1.60

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