Bug 2379349 (CVE-2025-52473)

Summary: CVE-2025-52473 liboqs: liboqs secret-dependent branching in HQC
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
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Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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An observable discrepancy was found in the reference implementation of the HQC key encapsulation mechanism when it is compiled with Clang for optimization levels above -O0 onto -O1, -O2, and beyond. A proof-of-concept local attack exploits this secret-dependent information to recover the entire secret key.
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Bug Depends On: 2379413, 2379412    
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-07-10 19:01:11 UTC 
liboqs is a C-language cryptographic library that provides implementations of post-quantum cryptography algorithms. Multiple secret-dependent branches have been identified in the reference implementation of the HQC key encapsulation mechanism when it is compiled with Clang for optimization levels above -O0 (-O1, -O2, etc). A proof-of-concept local attack exploits this secret-dependent information to recover the entire secret key. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.14.0.