CVE-2026-18036

Public on 2026-10-02
Modified on 2026-10-03
Description
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, NTRU reduced secret values with the % operator in three helpers whose reference implementations are deliberately division-free, so each reduction was carried out by an integer division whose latency depends on the secret operand. Polynomial.modQ divided by a variable divisor, which a compiler cannot strength-reduce to a multiply the way it can a constant one, so it emitted a division on every call including on the decapsulation path where the dividend derives from the private key; Polynomial.mod3 and NTRUSampling.mod3 divided the secret key polynomials f and g during key generation, the message polynomials r and m during encapsulation, and coefficients recovered during decapsulation. An attacker able to measure that timing can recover information about the NTRU private key. modQ now masks, which is exact because q is always a power of two, and mod3 uses the reference implementation's division-free fold and select; the results are unchanged.
Severity
Medium severity
Medium
See what this means
CVSS v3 Base Score
5.9
See breakdown

Affected Packages

Platform Package Release Date Advisory Status
Amazon Linux 2023 bouncycastle Not Affected

CVSS Scores

Score Type Score Vector
Amazon Linux CVSSv3 5.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N