CVE-2026-97873

Legacy PBES1 and PKCS#12 PBE iteration count honoured unbounded in the raw JCA provider

MEDIUM
5.3
CVSS Score
Published: October 3, 2026 at 08:04 AM UTC
Updated: October 6, 2026 at 02:49 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorBC Java

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Severity
MEDIUM5.3
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.3%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, the raw JCA provider's legacy PBES1 (PKCS#5 scheme 1) and PKCS#12 PBE families ran their password-based key derivation with an iteration count taken from untrusted input without bounding it, so a small input could dictate an arbitrary amount of work before anything could be verified. The AlgorithmParameters implementations (PKCS12PBE and its object identifier aliases, and PBKDF1) accepted any count from an encoded PKCS12PBEParams or PBEParameter, narrowing a value beyond the int range with intValue(), and every Cipher, Mac and SecretKeyFactory in these families derived with whatever count it was given, including one decoded by another provider's AlgorithmParameters, as when javax.crypto.EncryptedPrivateKeyInfo.getKeySpec() decrypts a PKCS#12 PBE-protected private key with BC. Both the parameter parse and the derivations now reject a negative or over-limit count under the org.bouncycastle.pbe.max_iteration_count property (default 10,000,000) that already bounded PBKDF2 (CVE-2026-17508), and the parse rejects a count beyond the int range rather than narrowing it. This issue also affects Bouncy Castle for Java LTS before 2.73.13.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 1.862.73.0 ≤ v < 2.73.132.73.0
Affected range stops below 1.86, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 2.73.13, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitAutomatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

5.3MEDIUMbcorg
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusAWAITING ANALYSIS
CWE
CWE-770

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