CVE-2024-14041 HIGH

CVE-2024-14041: ML-KEM (Kyber) decapsulation leaks private key information through non-constant-time division in message decoding and ciphertext compression (KyberSlash)

Vendor Legion Of The Bouncy Castle Inc.
Product BC-JAVA
Weakness CWE-208
Published July 28, 2026
Last update August 9, 2026

CVSS base score

8.2/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity High
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Confidentiality
Integrity

CVSS vector

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/U:Amber

What the vulnerability does

01Description

In Bouncy Castle for Java from 1.73 to before 1.78, three ML-KEM (CRYSTALS-Kyber) routines divided secret-derived polynomial coefficients by the modulus q: Poly.toMsg, which decodes the decrypted message, and the ciphertext compression routines Poly.compressPoly and PolyVec.compressPolyVec. An attacker able to measure the timing of a large number of decapsulations performed with the same long-term private key can recover that key. These are the KyberSlash1 (Poly.toMsg) and KyberSlash2 (ciphertext compression) divisions. Compression performed during encapsulation operates on values that become the public ciphertext and is not affected.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

July 28, 2026 CVE published
August 9, 2026 Record updated