CVE-2025-52473 MEDIUM

CVE-2025-52473: liboqs secret-dependent branching in HQC reference implementation when compiled with Clang 17-20

Vendor Open-Quantum-Safe
Product liboqs
Weakness CWE-200 · Info exposure
Published July 10, 2025
Last update July 10, 2025

CVSS base score

5.9/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity High
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Confidentiality High
Integrity None

CVSS vector

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

What the vulnerability does

01Description

liboqs is a C-language cryptographic library that provides implementations of post-quantum cryptography algorithms. Multiple secret-dependent branches have been identified in the reference implementation of the HQC key encapsulation mechanism when it is compiled with Clang for optimization levels above -O0 (-O1, -O2, etc). A proof-of-concept local attack exploits this secret-dependent information to recover the entire secret key. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.14.0.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

July 10, 2025 CVE published
July 10, 2025 Record updated