CVE-2026-13758

Public on 2026-06-29
Modified on 2026-07-01
Description
CryptX versions before 0.088_001 for Perl compare AEAD authentication tags in non-constant time in the streaming decrypt_done path.

The decrypt_done($tag) form compares it against the computed tag with memNE (memcmp() != 0), which short-circuits on the first differing byte, so its run time depends on the number of matching leading bytes. This affects all five AEAD modes: GCM, CCM, ChaCha20Poly1305, EAX and OCB. The one-shot *_decrypt_verify helpers are unaffected; they verify the tag inside libtomcrypt with a constant-time comparison.

The timing difference is a tag-verification oracle. An attacker who can submit many candidate tags for the same nonce, ciphertext and associated data while measuring the timing precisely enough may recover the expected tag byte by byte and forge a message that verifies.
Severity
Low severity
Low
See what this means
CVSS v3 Base Score
3.7
See breakdown

Affected Packages

Platform Package Release Date Advisory Status
Amazon Linux 2023 perl-CryptX Pending Fix

CVSS Scores

Score Type Score Vector
Amazon Linux CVSSv3 3.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N