Answer in brief
CVE-2026-97873 records a Medium severity (CVSS 5.3) vulnerability in Legacy PBES1 and PKCS#12 PBE iteration count honoured unbounded in the raw JCA provider. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. The current feed maps Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc./bcprov (generic), Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc./bcprov-lts8on (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
Analysis pending evidence review
HOL Guard separates source facts from reviewed analysis. See the methodology.
CVSS is 5.3. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. Treat this as a source-backed prioritization signal, not a statement about your environment.
Analysis status
Analysis pending evidence review
Factual feed record only; HOL analysis is not approved for indexing. Read the methodology.
The current feed maps Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc./bcprov (generic), Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc./bcprov-lts8on (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
| Package | Affected range | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc./bcprovgeneric | >=0 <1.86 | 1.86 |
| Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc./bcprov-lts8ongeneric | >=2.73.0 <2.73.13 | 2.73.13 |
Published upstream
Oct 3, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordSource modified
Oct 3, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordFirst seen by HOL
Oct 3, 2026
In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, the raw JCA provider's legacy PBES1 (PKCS#5 scheme 1) and PKCS#12 PBE families ran their password-based key derivation with an iteration count taken from untrusted input without bounding it, so a small input could dictate an arbitrary amount of work before anything could be verified. The AlgorithmParameters implementations (PKCS12PBE and its object identifier aliases, and PBKDF1) accepted any count from an encoded PKCS12PBEParams or PBEParameter, narrowing a value beyond the int range with intValue(), and every Cipher, Mac and SecretKeyFactory in these families derived with whatever count it was given, including one decoded by another provider's AlgorithmParameters, as when javax.crypto.EncryptedPrivateKeyInfo.getKeySpec() decrypts a PKCS#12 PBE-protected private key with BC. Both the parameter parse and the derivations now reject a negative or over-limit count under the org.bouncycastle.pbe.max_iteration_count property (default 10,000,000) that already bounded PBKDF2 (CVE-2026-17508), and the parse rejects a count beyond the int range rather than narrowing it. This issue also affects Bouncy Castle for Java LTS before 2.73.13.
Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.