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Fencer Intel
medium 5.3

CVE-2026-47738 json

liboqs: Uninitialized function-pointer dereference in OQS_KEM_encaps_derand for NTRU KEMs

published 9d ago modified 2d ago also EUVD-2026-118514 , GHSA-jr5q-r9qx-v738

Unreviewed: the maintainers' own advisory

Published by the maintainers on their GitHub repository open-quantum-safe/liboqs. GitHub has not reviewed it into the GitHub Advisory Database, so the affected packages and versions are the maintainers' word. Read the full advisory on GitHub.

cvss
5.3
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 23%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

liboqs is a C-language cryptographic library that provides implementations of post-quantum cryptography algorithms. Prior to 0.16.0, OQS_KEM_encaps_derand can dereference an uninitialized encaps_derand function pointer when called on NTRU-HPS-2048-509, NTRU-HPS-2048-677, NTRU-HPS-4096-821, NTRU-HPS-4096-1229, NTRU-HRSS-701, or NTRU-HRSS-1373. The affected NTRU constructors omit the OQS_KEM.encaps_derand member because those schemes do not support derandomized encapsulation, OQS_KEM objects are allocated without zero initialization, and the wrapper in src/kem/kem.c checks only that the OQS_KEM pointer is non-null before calling through the residual heap value. An application is affected only if it instantiates one of those six NTRU KEMs and invokes OQS_KEM_encaps_derand on it. The supported impact is a calling-process crash and denial of service. This issue is fixed in version 0.16.0.

Patch / fix

  • openquantumsafe liboqs 0.16.0

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CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2d ago

Exploit prediction

0.30% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 23% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Affected products

  • open-quantum-safe liboqs

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-824 Access of Uninitialized Pointer

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.

The maintainers of open-quantum-safe/liboqs published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.