Skip to content
Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2018-6829 json

cipher/elgamal.c in Libgcrypt through 1.8.2, when used to encrypt messages directly, improperly encodes plaintexts, which allows attackers…

published 2018-02-07 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-18576

cvss
7.5
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.8%
EPSS 1.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 78%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

cipher/elgamal.c in Libgcrypt through 1.8.2, when used to encrypt messages directly, improperly encodes plaintexts, which allows attackers to obtain sensitive information by reading ciphertext data (i.e., it does not have semantic security in face of a ciphertext-only attack). The Decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) assumption does not hold for Libgcrypt's ElGamal implementation.

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-2018-6829 updated cvss 5.3

libgcrypt: ElGamal implementation doesn't have semantic security due to incorrectly encoded plaintexts possibly allowing to obtain sensitive information

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 libgcrypt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 libgcrypt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 libgcrypt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 libgcrypt
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

1.78% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 78% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/weikengchen/attack-on-libgcrypt-elgamal/wiki referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

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:H/I:N/A:N
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-327 Use of a Broken or Risky Cryptographic Algorithm

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.