CVE-2025-29779: Post-Quantum Secure Feldman's Verifiable Secret Sharing has Inadequate Fault Injection Countermeasures in `secure_redundant_execution`

5.4 CVSS

Description

Post-Quantum Secure Feldman's Verifiable Secret Sharing provides a Python implementation of Feldman's Verifiable Secret Sharing (VSS) scheme. In versions 0.7.6b0 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 remed...

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2025-29779

CVSS Base Severity: MEDIUM

CVSS Base Score: 5.4

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:P/AC:H/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Problem Types

CWE-1240: Use of a Cryptographic Primitive with a Risky Implementation CWE-1279: Cryptographic Operations are run Before Supporting Units are Ready

Affected Products

Vendor: DavidOsipov

Product: PostQuantum-Feldman-VSS

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.01% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 0.54% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-04-12 (when was this score calculated)

References

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-29779
https://github.com/DavidOsipov/PostQuantum-Feldman-VSS/security/advisories/GHSA-r8gc-qc2c-c7vh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_attack
https://eprint.iacr.org/2004/100.pdf

Timeline