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Fencer Intel
low 3.7

CVE-2025-48946 json

liboqs affected by theoretical design flaw in HQC

published last yr. modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2025-16528

cvss
3.7
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 16%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

liboqs is a C-language cryptographic library that provides implementations of post-quantum cryptography algorithms. liboqs prior to version 0.13.0 supports the HQC algorithm, an algorithm with a theoretical design flaw which leads to large numbers of malformed ciphertexts sharing the same implicit rejection value. Currently, no concrete attack on the algorithm is known. However, prospective users of HQC must take extra care when using the algorithm in protocols involving key derivation. In particular, HQC does not provide the same security guarantees as Kyber or ML-KEM. There is currently no patch for the HQC flaw available in liboqs, so HQC is disabled by default in liboqs starting from version 0.13.0. OQS will update its implementation after the HQC team releases an updated algorithm specification.

Patch / fix

  • openquantumsafe liboqs 0.13.0

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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-2025-48946 updated cvss 3.7

liboqs: liboqs affected by theoretical design flaw in HQC

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 liboqs
    affected: workaround, no fix available “Users are advised to disable the HQC algorithm family.”

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

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
last yr.

Exploit prediction

0.25% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 16% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 3.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

Affected products

  • open-quantum-safe liboqs

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.