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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2023-33202 json

Bouncy Castle Denial of Service (DoS)

published 2023-11-23 2 y ago modified 2026-09-10 1 mo ago also GHSA-wjxj-5m7g-mg7q , EUVD-2023-3052

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.0%
EPSS 1.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 62%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.73 contains a potential Denial of Service (DoS) issue within the Bouncy Castle org.bouncycastle.openssl.PEMParser class. This class parses OpenSSL PEM encoded streams containing X.509 certificates, PKCS8 encoded keys, and PKCS7 objects. Parsing a file that has crafted ASN.1 data through the PEMParser causes an OutOfMemoryError, which can enable a denial of service attack. (For users of the FIPS Java API: BC-FJA 1.0.2.3 and earlier are affected; BC-FJA 1.0.2.4 is fixed.)

Patch / fix

  • maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk16 1.73
  • maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14 1.73
  • maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15 1.73
  • maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15to18 1.73
  • maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk16 1.73
  • maven org.bouncycastle:bcpkix-jdk18on 1.73
  • maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk15on 1.73
  • maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk18on 1.73
  • bouncycastle bouncy_castle_for_java 1.73
  • bouncycastle fips_java_api 1.0.2.4
  • bouncycastle Debian 14, Debian 13 1.77-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-33202

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2023-33202 updated cvss 5.5

bc-java: Out of memory while parsing ASN.1 crafted data in org.bouncycastle.openssl.PEMParser class

  • Red Hat AMQ Broker 7 bcpkix bcpkix
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat build of Apicurio Registry 2 bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat build of Debezium 2 bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat Data Grid 8 bcpkix bcpkix
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Decision Manager 7 bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat Fuse 7 bcpkix bcpkix
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat Integration Camel K 1 bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat JBoss Data Grid 7 bcpkix bcpkix
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 bcpkix bcpkix, keycloak-adapter-eap6 keycloak-adapter-eap6, keycloak-adapter-sso7_2-eap6 keycloak-adapter-sso7_2-eap6, keycloak-adapter-sso7_3-eap6 keycloak-adapter-sso7_3-eap6, keycloak-adapter-sso7_4-eap6 keycloak-adapter-sso7_4-eap6, keycloak-adapter-sso7_5-eap6 keycloak-adapter-sso7_5-eap6 Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6 bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat JBoss Fuse Service Works 6 bcpkix bcpkix
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Process Automation 7 bcpkix bcpkix
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat streams for Apache Kafka bcpkix bcpkix
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat OpenShift Developer Tools and Services jenkins, jenkins-2-plugins
    under investigation
show 2 more
  • Red Hat AMQ Streams 2.7.0
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2024:3527
  • Red Hat A-MQ Clients 2 bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat Logging Subsystem for Red Hat OpenShift bcpkix Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Applications 6 bcpkix Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Runtimes bcpkix Red Hat OpenShift Serverless bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat build of Apache Camel for Spring Boot 3 bcpkix bcpkix
    +12 more products
    Red Hat build of Quarkus bcpkix-jdk15on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 log4j, log4j-jcl, log4j-web, log4j-slf4j Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 log4j, log4j-jcl, log4j-slf4j Red Hat Integration Camel Quarkus 2 bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat JBoss Data Virtualization 6 bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7 bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 8 bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Expansion Pack bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 jenkins, jenkins-2-plugins Red Hat Satellite 6 puppetserver Red Hat Single Sign-On 7 bcpkix bcpkix Red Hat Virtualization 4 apache-sshd, apache-sshd-javadoc
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

1.00% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 62% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/bcgit/bc-java/wiki/CVE-2023-33202 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
GitHub 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk16
<1.73
1.73
maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk14
<1.73
1.73
maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15
<1.73
1.73
maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15to18
<1.73
1.73
maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk16
<1.73
1.73
maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk15on
all versions
 no fix listed
maven org.bouncycastle:bcpkix-jdk18on
<1.73
1.73
maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-ext-jdk15on
<1.73
1.73
maven org.bouncycastle:bcprov-jdk18on
<1.73
1.73

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.