CVE-2025-29779

Post-Quantum Secure Feldman's Verifiable Secret Sharing has Inadequate Fault Injection Countermeasures in `secure_redundant_execution`

Description

Post-Quantum Secure Feldman's Verifiable Secret Sharing provides a Python implementation of Feldman's Verifiable Secret Sharing (VSS) scheme. In versions 0.8.0b2 and prior, the `secure_redundant_execution` function in feldman_vss.py attempts to mitigate fault injection attacks by executing a function multiple times and comparing results. However, several critical weaknesses exist. Python's execution environment cannot guarantee true isolation between redundant executions, the constant-time comparison implementation in Python is subject to timing variations, the randomized execution order and timing provide insufficient protection against sophisticated fault attacks, and the error handling may leak timing information about partial execution results. These limitations make the protection ineffective against targeted fault injection attacks, especially from attackers with physical access to the hardware. A successful fault injection attack could allow an attacker to bypass the redundancy check mechanisms, extract secret polynomial coefficients during share generation or verification, force the acceptance of invalid shares during verification, and/or manipulate the commitment verification process to accept fraudulent commitments. This undermines the core security guarantees of the Verifiable Secret Sharing scheme. As of time of publication, no patched versions of Post-Quantum Secure Feldman's Verifiable Secret Sharing exist, but other mitigations are available. Long-term remediation requires reimplementing the security-critical functions in a lower-level language like Rust. Short-term mitigations include deploying the software in environments with physical security controls, increasing the redundancy count (from 5 to a higher number) by modifying the source code, adding external verification of cryptographic operations when possible, considering using hardware security modules (HSMs) for key operations.

Category

5.4
CVSS
Severity: Medium
CVSS 4.0 •
EPSS 0.01%
Affected: DavidOsipov PostQuantum-Feldman-VSS
Published at:
Updated at:

References

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the severity of CVE-2025-29779?
CVE-2025-29779 has been scored as a medium severity vulnerability.
How to fix CVE-2025-29779?
To fix CVE-2025-29779, make sure you are using an up-to-date version of the affected component(s) by checking the vendor release notes. As for now, there are no other specific guidelines available.
Is CVE-2025-29779 being actively exploited in the wild?
As for now, there are no information to confirm that CVE-2025-29779 is being actively exploited. According to its EPSS score, there is a ~0% probability that this vulnerability will be exploited by malicious actors in the next 30 days.
What software or system is affected by CVE-2025-29779?
CVE-2025-29779 affects DavidOsipov PostQuantum-Feldman-VSS.
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