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CVE-2024-53857

rPGP Potential Resource Exhaustion when handling Untrusted Messages

7.5 HighFix available

rPGP is a pure Rust implementation of OpenPGP. Prior to 0.14.1, rPGP allows attackers to trigger resource exhaustion vulnerabilities in rpgp by providing crafted messages. This affects general message parsing and decryption with symmetric keys.

Attack profile

How easy it is to exploit

Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges needed
None
User interaction
None

What an attacker can affect

Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

Exploit likelihood

0.47%Up 0.4 points since Dec 7, 2024
90%50%10%1%

What each source reports

CVE List Score used 7.5

rPGP Potential Resource Exhaustion when handling Untrusted Messages

rPGP is a pure Rust implementation of OpenPGP. Prior to 0.14.1, rPGP allows attackers to trigger resource exhaustion vulnerabilities in rpgp by providing crafted messages. This affects general message parsing and decryption with symmetric keys.

Record
CVE-2024-53857
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-770
Updated
2026-11-02
EUVDEUVD-2024-3422 7.5

rPGP is a pure Rust implementation of OpenPGP. Prior to 0.14.1, rPGP allows attackers to trigger resource exhaustion vulnerabilities in rpgp by providing crafted messages. This affects general message parsing and decryption with symmetric keys.

Record
EUVD-2024-3422
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Updated
2026-11-03
GitHub AdvisoriesGHSA-4grw-m28r-q285 8.7

rPGP Potential Resource Exhaustion when handling Untrusted Messages

During a security audit, Radically Open Security discovered two vulnerabilities which allow attackers to trigger resource exhaustion vulnerabilities in rpgp by providing crafted messages. This affects general message parsing and decryption with symmetric keys.

Impact

Affected rpgp versions do not correctly set upper limits on the total reserved amount of memory when parsing long sequences of partial OpenPGP packets, which can grow to to several GiB in size. Additionally, up to 4GiB of memory is reserved for OpenPGP packets of fixed size with large length fields, even if less data is received. Depending on existing message size restrictions and available system resources, this can cause out-of-memory conditions and crash the rpgp process or cause other system instability through memory resource exhaustion when parsing crafted messages.

Affected rpgp versions are susceptible to excessive memory allocation with values of up to 2TiB or long processing times for some decryption operations which involve the Argon2 function. An attacker can provide a valid Symmetric Key Encrypted Session Key packet (SKESK) which uses Argon2 for String-to-Key hashing with parameters that are excessive, but within specification limits of the RFC9580 OpenPGP standard. Since rpgp did not further restrict the Argon2 parameters, this can cause out-of-memory conditions and crash the rpgp process. Under some conditions, the memory resource exhaustion may trigger other system instability. Alternatively, this can make the program unresponsive via long computations. The attacker needs to trick a victim into attempting decryption, but does not require knowledge of the symmetric secret used by the victim.

There is no impact to confidentiality or integrity security properties.

Versions and Patches

The impact details on the message parsing component varies with different versions. We've confirmed some of the problematic behavior on older versions such as v0.10.0 and see all recent versions as affected in some form.

The affected Argon2 functionality was introduced with v0.12.0-alpha.1, earlier versions are not vulnerable.

The vulnerabilities have been fixed with version 0.14.2. We recommend all users to upgrade to this version.

References

The security audit was made possible by the NLnet Foundation NGI Zero Core grant program for rpgp.

Record
GHSA-4grw-m28r-q285
CVSS 4.0
8.7 HighCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-770
Updated
2026-11-02
NVD 7.5

rPGP is a pure Rust implementation of OpenPGP. Prior to 0.14.1, rPGP allows attackers to trigger resource exhaustion vulnerabilities in rpgp by providing crafted messages. This affects general message parsing and decryption with symmetric keys.

Record
CVE-2024-53857
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-770
Updated
2026-11-02
OSV 7.5

rPGP Potential Resource Exhaustion when handling Untrusted Messages

rPGP is a pure Rust implementation of OpenPGP. Prior to 0.14.1, rPGP allows attackers to trigger resource exhaustion vulnerabilities in rpgp by providing crafted messages. This affects general message parsing and decryption with symmetric keys.

Record
CVE-2024-53857
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-770
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVDEBIAN-CVE-2024-53857 7.5

rPGP is a pure Rust implementation of OpenPGP. Prior to 0.14.1, rPGP allows attackers to trigger resource exhaustion vulnerabilities in rpgp by providing crafted messages. This affects general message parsing and decryption with symmetric keys.

Record
DEBIAN-CVE-2024-53857
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Updated
2026-11-02
OSVGHSA-4grw-m28r-q285 8.7

rPGP Potential Resource Exhaustion when handling Untrusted Messages

During a security audit, Radically Open Security discovered two vulnerabilities which allow attackers to trigger resource exhaustion vulnerabilities in rpgp by providing crafted messages. This affects general message parsing and decryption with symmetric keys.

Impact

Affected rpgp versions do not correctly set upper limits on the total reserved amount of memory when parsing long sequences of partial OpenPGP packets, which can grow to to several GiB in size. Additionally, up to 4GiB of memory is reserved for OpenPGP packets of fixed size with large length fields, even if less data is received. Depending on existing message size restrictions and available system resources, this can cause out-of-memory conditions and crash the rpgp process or cause other system instability through memory resource exhaustion when parsing crafted messages.

Affected rpgp versions are susceptible to excessive memory allocation with values of up to 2TiB or long processing times for some decryption operations which involve the Argon2 function. An attacker can provide a valid Symmetric Key Encrypted Session Key packet (SKESK) which uses Argon2 for String-to-Key hashing with parameters that are excessive, but within specification limits of the RFC9580 OpenPGP standard. Since rpgp did not further restrict the Argon2 parameters, this can cause out-of-memory conditions and crash the rpgp process. Under some conditions, the memory resource exhaustion may trigger other system instability. Alternatively, this can make the program unresponsive via long computations. The attacker needs to trick a victim into attempting decryption, but does not require knowledge of the symmetric secret used by the victim.

There is no impact to confidentiality or integrity security properties.

Versions and Patches

The impact details on the message parsing component varies with different versions. We've confirmed some of the problematic behavior on older versions such as v0.10.0 and see all recent versions as affected in some form.

The affected Argon2 functionality was introduced with v0.12.0-alpha.1, earlier versions are not vulnerable.

The vulnerabilities have been fixed with version 0.14.2. We recommend all users to upgrade to this version.

References

The security audit was made possible by the NLnet Foundation NGI Zero Core grant program for rpgp.

Record
GHSA-4grw-m28r-q285
CVSS 4.0
8.7 HighCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CVSS 3.1
7.5 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Weakness
CWE-770
Updated
2026-11-02

Affected products

Affected packages

Affected packages
PackageAffectedFixed
pgp
crates.io
before 0.14.2
0.14.2
rust-pgp
Debian:13
before 0.14.2-1
0.14.2-1
rust-pgp
Debian:14
before 0.14.2-1
0.14.2-1

History

History
RecordedChangedSources
aliases, publishedEUVD
first indexedCVE List, GitHub Advisories, NVD, OSV

Dates are when Every CVE recorded each change. Upstream dates may differ.

In short

CVE-2024-53857 is a high vulnerability (CVSS 7.5) in Rpgp, published December 5, 2024. No source lists public exploit code. EPSS puts the chance of exploitation in the next 30 days at 0.47%, the 40th percentile. Fixed in pgp 0.14.2.

References

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