Vulnerability · Published Jul 10, 2025 · Assigned by GitHub_M

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

Medium 5.9

In plain English

A medium-severity information exposure in liboqs from open-quantum-safe. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 15% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 3.1)5.9Medium

Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 85.4% of all CVEs

Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none

Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

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.

Affected products (as reported)

Vendor	Product	Versions
open-quantum-safe	liboqs	< 0.14.0

Weakness: CWE-200 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

References

https://github.com/open-quantum-safe/liboqs/security/advisories/GHSA-qq3m-rq9v-jfgm x_refsource_CONFIRM
https://github.com/open-quantum-safe/liboqs/commit/4215362acbf69b88fe1777c4c052f154e29f9897 x_refsource_MISC