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UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityAnalyzed

CVE-2026-16001

Exposure of the message authentication key through the encryption keystream in the stream mode of IesEngine (an IesEngine constructed without a block cipher) in Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. bc-csharp before 2.7.0 allows a remote attacker who has…

HIGH 8.2EPSS 0.19%

Does this matter?

High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (0.19%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.

Description

Exposure of the message authentication key through the encryption keystream in the stream mode of IesEngine (an IesEngine constructed without a block cipher) in Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. bc-csharp before 2.7.0 allows a remote attacker who has observed one encrypted message with known plaintext to forge shorter messages of their choosing that the recipient accepts as authentic, via a crafted ciphertext and MAC tag, because the MAC key was taken from the key derivation output directly after a keystream as long as the message, while the derivation input depends only on the static key pair and fixed parameters. The keystream revealed by that one message therefore contains the MAC key for every sufficiently shorter message.

CVSS 4.0
8.2 HIGHCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
EPSS
0.19% probability · 9th percentile
Public exploits
None in Exploit-DB
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-354
Affected
bouncycastle/bc-csharp
Source
91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630
EPSS trend
0%3%5%2 October 2026: 0.17%26 October 2026: 0.19%2 October 202626 October 2026

EPSS moved from 0.2% on 2 October 2026 to 0.2% on 26 October 2026.

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.