High severity · published Oct 2, 2026
CVE-2026-103603
Unbounded HSS public key level count allows huge array allocation during signature verification
7.5
CVSS
0.5%
EPSS
No
On KEV
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.5% · higher than 43% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
BC
bc-csharp · Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc.
before 2.7.0 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-103603
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-103603
vendor-advisory
https://github.com/bcgit/bc-csharp/wiki/CVE-2026-103603
patch
https://github.com/bcgit/bc-csharp/commit/f47ad47c7b5745b53d3f9ac711a5a419a272a5d7
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