CVE-2025-13470 RNP 0.18.0 Vulnerable PKESK session keys
Attackers can trivially decrypt public-key encrypted data due to uninitialized session keys, compromising confidentiality for users of the RNP library.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2025-13470?
CVE-2025-13470 is a high-severity vulnerability in Ribose RNP, published on 21 Nov 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In RNP version 0.18.0 a refactoring regression causes the symmetric session key used for Public-Key Encrypted Session Key (PKESK) packets to be left uninitialized except for zeroing, resulting in it always being an all-zero byte array.
Any data encrypted using public-key encryption in this release can be decrypted trivially by supplying an all-zero session key, fully compromising confidentiality.
The vulnerability affects only public key encryption (PKESK packets). Passphrase-based encryption (SKESK packets) is not affected.
Root cause: Vulnerable session key buffer used in PKESK packet generation.
The defect was introduced in commit `7bd9a8dc356aae756b40755be76d36205b6b161a` where initialization logic inside `encrypted_build_skesk()` only randomized the key for the SKESK path and omitted it for the PKESK path.
Weakness: CWE-330
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-13470?
How do I fix CVE-2025-13470?
Upgrade to a fixed version.
Is CVE-2025-13470 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-13470 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2025-13470, GHSA-r3r8-w3g2-hq7h, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-13470.