CVE-2026-74900

openssl_encrypt versions before 1.4.0 contain a critical vulnerability in pqc.py where KEM decapsulation failures silently fall back to simulation mode, generating a deterministic shared secret from only 16 bytes of the private key and publicly available encapsulated key data. Attackers who obtain 16 bytes of the private key can compute the shared secret and decrypt all ciphertext, as the fallback triggers on any KEM failure without raising an error.

Scoring

Severity
CRITICAL
CVSS base score
9.8
CVSS vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
EPSS probability
0.34%
CWE
CWE-391
Published
2026-08-17
Last modified
2026-08-17

Affected products

Weakness type

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