CVE-2026-71884
Published:October 09, 2026
Updated:October 12, 2026
In Bouncy Castle for Java LTS before 2.73.13, the native one-shot CTR packet cipher did not check that the requested input length fitted the counter space the IV left. In CTR mode the IV and the block counter share one 16-byte block, so an IV of 13 to 15 bytes leaves a counter of only 1 to 3 bytes, addressing 256, 65536 or 16777216 blocks respectively. Given a longer input the counter wrapped and the keystream repeated from the start of the same packet, and the call then returned the full input length as though every byte had been correctly transformed. Two segments of the message were therefore encrypted under the same keystream, so their plaintexts can be recovered from the ciphertext alone, without the key, while the caller saw neither an exception nor a short length to indicate it. The streaming implementation validates at init and again while processing, and the portable AESCTRPacketCipher rejects such a request with "Counter in CTR/SIC mode out of range.", but the native one-shot path has a single entry point and performed no counter-range validation there. It now preflights the IV-derived counter range and rejects an over-long request before any output is written, so the operation is failure-atomic and never reports success for bytes it did not correctly transform. A counter of four bytes or more cannot be exhausted by a Java int length and is unaffected, as is a full 16-byte IV, where the counter range is the caller's responsibility. Bouncy Castle for Java (bcprov) is not affected, as it ships no native implementations.
Affected Packages
https://github.com/bcgit/bc-lts-java.git (GITHUB):
Affected version(s) >=r2rv73dot4 <r2rv73dot13Fix Suggestion:
Update to version r2rv73dot13org.bouncycastle:bcprov-lts8on (JAVA):
Affected version(s) >=2.73.4 <2.73.13Fix Suggestion:
Update to version 2.73.13Related Resources (5)
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Contact UsCVSS v4
Base Score:
8.2
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Attack Requirements
PRESENT
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Vulnerable System Confidentiality
HIGH
Vulnerable System Integrity
NONE
Vulnerable System Availability
NONE
Subsequent System Confidentiality
NONE
Subsequent System Integrity
NONE
Subsequent System Availability
NONE
CVSS v3
Base Score:
7.5
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
NONE
Availability
NONE
Weakness Type (CWE)
Reusing a Nonce, Key Pair in Encryption
EPSS
Base Score:
0.41