CVE-2026-3503 | Fault injection attack with ML-DSA and ML-KEM on ARM

Protection mechanism failure in wolfCrypt post-quantum implementations (ML-KEM and ML-DSA) in wolfSSL on ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers allows a physical attacker to compromise key material and/or cryptographic outcomes via induced transient faults that corrupt or redirect seed/pointer values during Keccak-based expansion. This issue affects wolfSSL (wolfCrypt): commit hash d86575c766e6e67ef93545fa69c04d6eb49400c6.

Published: 2026-03-19 Last update: 2026-04-29 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Analyzed，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2026-3503 is rated Low Risk (19.1/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.02%). Low composite risk—no urgent action required; patch on your normal maintenance cycle and revisit priority if CVSS or EPSS increases.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2026-3503

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-03-20 — 0.02% —

Full EPSS history (1 record total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2026-3503

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
4.3 4.0 MEDIUM
CVSS:4.0/AV:P/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:L/VA:N/SC:L/SI:L/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:Amber Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:P)
Physical access is required.
Attack complexity (AC:H)
Exploitation depends on constrained or hard-to-reproduce conditions.
Attack requirements (AT:P)
Additional preconditions must be present for exploitation.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No privileges are required.
User interaction (UI:N)
No user interaction is required.
Vulnerable system confidentiality impact (VC:H)
High confidentiality impact on the vulnerable system.
Vulnerable system integrity impact (VI:L)
Limited integrity impact on the vulnerable system.
Vulnerable system availability impact (VA:N)
No availability impact on the vulnerable system.
Subsequent system confidentiality impact (SC:L)
Limited confidentiality impact on subsequent systems.
Subsequent system integrity impact (SI:L)
Limited integrity impact on subsequent systems.
Subsequent system availability impact (SA:N)
No availability impact on subsequent systems.
Exploit maturity (threat) (E:X)
Not defined: no reliable threat intelligence; scoring assumes the worst case (equivalent to Attacked).
Confidentiality requirement (CR:X)
Not defined: insufficient information; scoring treats this like High (worst case).
Integrity requirement (IR:X)
Not defined: insufficient information; scoring treats this like High (worst case).
Availability requirement (AR:X)
Not defined: insufficient information; scoring treats this like High (worst case).
Modified attack vector (MAV:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base Attack Vector (AV).
Modified attack complexity (MAC:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base Attack Complexity (AC).
Modified attack requirements (MAT:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base Attack Requirements (AT).
Modified privileges required (MPR:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base Privileges Required (PR).
Modified user interaction (MUI:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base User Interaction (UI).
Modified vulnerable system confidentiality impact (MVC:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base VC metric.
Modified vulnerable system integrity impact (MVI:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base VI metric.
Modified vulnerable system availability impact (MVA:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base VA metric.
Modified subsequent system confidentiality impact (MSC:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base SC metric.
Modified subsequent system integrity impact (MSI:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base SI metric.
Modified subsequent system availability impact (MSA:X)
Not defined: scoring uses the Base SA metric.
Safety (supplemental) (S:X)
Not evaluated.
Automatable (supplemental) (AU:X)
Not evaluated.
Recovery (supplemental) (R:X)
Not evaluated.
Value density (supplemental) (V:X)
Not evaluated.
Vulnerability response effort (supplemental) (RE:X)
Not evaluated.
Provider urgency (supplemental) (U:AMBER)
Amber: provider rates moderate urgency.
 — — [email protected]
5.2 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:P)
Hands-on access—USB, keyboard, opening the case—not something you do purely over the wire.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:L)
Attackers could change some data, but it’s limited—not everything goes.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 0.9 4.2 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2026-3503

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2026-3503

GHSA-pgc5-r6cv-2825 · Severity: medium — Protection mechanism failure in wolfCrypt post-quantum implementations (ML-KEM and ML-DSA) in...

OS Trackers for CVE-2026-3503

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2026-3503 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (wolfssl), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): open 3, resolved 2. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-3503
ubuntu medium CVE-2026-3503 medium priority: Ubuntu including 1 source packages (wolfssl), 7 status rows across 7 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, questing, upstream, xenial): needs-triage 7. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-3503

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2026-3503

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
wolfssl wolfssl >= 5.8.2, < 5.9.0 cpe:2.3:a:wolfssl:wolfssl:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2026-3503

URL Tags
https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl/pull/9734 Issue Tracking Patch
cvelogic Threat Intelligence