CVE-2024-34703 HIGH

CVE-2024-34703: Botan Vulnerable to Denial of Service Due to Overly Large Elliptic Curve Parameters

Vendor Randombit
Product botan
Weakness CWE-405
Published June 30, 2024
Last update January 30, 2026

CVSS base score

7.5/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Confidentiality None
Integrity None

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

What the vulnerability does

01Description

Botan is a C++ cryptography library. X.509 certificates can identify elliptic curves using either an object identifier or using explicit encoding of the parameters. Prior to versions 3.3.0 and 2.19.4, an attacker could present an ECDSA X.509 certificate using explicit encoding where the parameters are very large. The proof of concept used a 16Kbit prime for this purpose. When parsing, the parameter is checked to be prime, causing excessive computation. This was patched in 2.19.4 and 3.3.0 to allow the prime parameter of the elliptic curve to be at most 521 bits. No known workarounds are available. Note that support for explicit encoding of elliptic curve parameters is deprecated in Botan.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

June 30, 2024 CVE published
January 30, 2026 Record updated