CVE-2015-8805

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2016-02-23 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-310

Description

The ecc_256_modq function in ecc-256.c in Nettle before 3.2 does not properly handle carry propagation and produces incorrect output in its implementation of the P-256 NIST elliptic curve, which allows attackers to have unspecified impact via unknown vectors, a different vulnerability than CVE-2015-8803.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 14.04, 15.10
[UNKNOWN] nettle: through 3.1.1
openSUSE Leap: 42.1
Opensuse: 13.1, 13.2

References

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2016-02/msg00091.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2016-02/msg00093.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2016-02/msg00100.html
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-2582.html
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/02/02/2
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/02/03/1
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/84272
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2897-1
https://blog.fuzzing-project.org/38-Miscomputations-of-elliptic-curve-scalar-multiplications-in-Nettle.html
https://git.lysator.liu.se/nettle/nettle/commit/c71d2c9d20eeebb985e3872e4550137209e3ce4d
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2016-02/msg00091.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2016-02/msg00093.html

Get alerted when CVE-2015-8805 or the next vulnerability affects your stack