CVE-2024-13176 Timing side-channel in ECDSA signature computation

What is CVE-2024-13176?

CVE-2024-13176 is a medium-severity vulnerability in OpenSSL, published on 20 Jan 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Issue summary: A timing side-channel which could potentially allow recovering the private key exists in the ECDSA signature computation.

Impact summary: A timing side-channel in ECDSA signature computations could allow recovering the private key by an attacker. However, measuring the timing would require either local access to the signing application or a very fast network connection with low latency.

There is a timing signal of around 300 nanoseconds when the top word of the inverted ECDSA nonce value is zero. This can happen with significant probability only for some of the supported elliptic curves. In particular the NIST P-521 curve is affected. To be able to measure this leak, the attacker process must either be located in the same physical computer or must have a very fast network connection with low latency. For that reason the severity of this vulnerability is Low.

The FIPS modules in 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1 and 3.0 are affected by this issue.

Weakness: CWE-385

Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-13176?

How do I fix CVE-2024-13176?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2024-13176 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-13176 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Public exploit code: 1 proofs of concept on GitHub.

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as ALPINE-CVE-2024-13176, AZL-55889, AZL-55894, AZL-56010, AZL-78537, BELL-CVE-2024-13176 and 28 more.