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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2016-3959 json

Denial of service due to unchecked parameters in crypto/dsa

published 2016-05-23 10 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GO-2022-0166 , EUVD-2016-4968

cvss
7.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
4.4%
EPSS 4.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 91%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

The Verify function in crypto/dsa/dsa.go in Go before 1.5.4 and 1.6.x before 1.6.1 does not properly check parameters passed to the big integer library, which might allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop) via a crafted public key to a program that uses HTTPS client certificates or SSH server libraries.

Patch / fix

  • go stdlib 1.5.4, 1.6.1
  • golang RHEL 7 1.6.3-1.el7_2.1
  • golang-bin RHEL 7 1.6.3-1.el7_2.1
  • golang-src RHEL 7 1.6.3-1.el7_2.1
  • golang-misc RHEL 7 1.6.3-1.el7_2.1
  • golang-tests RHEL 7 1.6.3-1.el7_2.1

red hat advisories RHSA-2016:1538

  • go openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.7.0-2.1
  • go1.10 openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.10.8-8.2
  • go1.11 openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.11.13-10.5
  • go1.12 openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.12.17-4.8
  • go1.9 openSUSE Tumbleweed 1.9.7-11.2

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10028-1openSUSE-SU-2024:10803-1openSUSE-SU-2024:10804-1openSUSE-SU-2024:10805-1openSUSE-SU-2024:10812-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2016-3959 updated cvss 5.3

golang: infinite loop in several big integer routines

  • Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise 3 golang
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 7) golang 1.6.3-1.el7_2.1, golang-bin 1.6.3-1.el7_2.1, golang-src 1.6.3-1.el7_2.1, golang-misc 1.6.3-1.el7_2.1, golang-tests 1.6.3-1.el7_2.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2016:1538

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

4.36% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 91% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 7.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
go stdlib
<1.5.4
>=1.6.0-0, <1.6.1
1.5.4
1.6.1

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.