CVE-2026-74900
Medium
Elevated severity or exploit probability.
CVSS base
9.8
CRITICAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS — probability of exploitation (30 days)
0.3%
27.2th percentile
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness / dates
CWE-391
Published 2026-08-17 · modified 2026-09-01
CVSS breakdown
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
| Attack Vector | N | Network |
| Attack Complexity | L | Low |
| Privileges Required | N | None |
| User Interaction | N | None |
| Scope | U | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | H | High |
| Integrity | H | High |
| Availability | H | High |
Timeline
- 2026-08-17 — Published (NVD)
- 2026-09-01 — Last modified (NVD)
Description
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.