GHSA-r6ph-v2qm-q3c2
cryptography Vulnerable to a Subgroup Attack Due to Missing Subgroup Validation for SECT Curves
Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| PyPI | cryptography | < 46.0.5 | 46.0.5 |
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
## Vulnerability Summary
The `public_key_from_numbers` (or `EllipticCurvePublicNumbers.public_key()`), `EllipticCurvePublicNumbers.public_key()`, `load_der_public_key()` and `load_pem_public_key()` functions do not verify that the point belongs to the expected prime-order subgroup of the curve.
This missing validation allows an attacker to provide a public key point `P` from a small-order subgroup. This can lead to security issues in various situations, such as the most commonly used signature verification (ECDSA) and shared key negotiation (ECDH). When the victim computes the shared secret as `S = [victim_private_key]P` via ECDH, this leaks information about `victim_private_key mod (small_subgroup_order)`. For curves with cofactor > 1, this reveals the least significant bits of the private key. When these weak public keys are used in ECDSA , it's easy to forge signatures on the small subgroup.
Only SECT curves are impacted by this.
## Credit
This vulnerability was discovered by:
- XlabAI Team of Tencent Xuanwu Lab
- Atuin Automated Vulnerability Discovery Engine
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.
- https://github.com/pyca/cryptography/security/advisories/GHSA-r6ph-v2qm-q3c2
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-26007
- https://github.com/pyca/cryptography/commit/0eebb9dbb6343d9bc1d91e5a2482ed4e054a6d8c
- https://github.com/pyca/cryptography
- https://github.com/pyca/cryptography/releases/tag/46.0.5
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/02/10/4