A timing side-channel vulnerability exists in the ECDSA signature computation that could potentially allow an attacker to recover the private key. This vulnerability requires either local access to the signing application or a very fast network connection with low latency to measure the timing signal. The severity of this vulnerability is considered low, primarily affecting the NIST P-521 curve.
Details
| Severity | Base Score | CVE |
|---|---|---|
| MEDIUM | 4.1 | CVE-2024-13176 |
Exploitation
To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must either have local access to the application performing ECDSA signature computations or establish a very low-latency network connection to measure the timing of the signature operations. By analyzing the timing differences, particularly when the top word of the inverted ECDSA nonce is zero, the attacker may be able to infer the private key.
Affected Products
- OpenSSL FIPS modules 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, and 3.0: These modules are affected due to the timing side-channel vulnerability in ECDSA signature computations.
Mitigation
To mitigate this vulnerability, it is recommended to implement countermeasures that obscure timing information during ECDSA signature computations. This may include using constant-time algorithms or other techniques to prevent timing analysis attacks.