CWE-208
Observable Timing Discrepancy
BaseIncomplete
Description
Two separate operations in a product require different amounts of time to complete, in a way that is observable to an actor and reveals security-relevant information about the state of the product, such as whether a particular operation was successful or not.
In security-relevant contexts, even small variations in timing can be exploited by attackers to indirectly infer certain details about the product's internal operations. For example, in some cryptographic algorithms, attackers can use timing differences to infer certain properties about a private key, making the key easier to guess. Timing discrepancies effectively form a timing side channel.
Hierarchy (View 1000)
Related attack patterns (CAPEC)
CAPEC-462 · CAPEC-541 · CAPEC-580
CVEs mapped to this weakness (32)
page 1 of 2| CVE | Sev | Risk | CVSS | EPSS | KEV | Published | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2026-40972 | Hig | 0.49 | 7.5 | 0.00 | Apr 28, 2026 | An attacker on the same network as the remote application may be able to utilize a timing attack to discover information about the remote secret. In extreme circumstances this could result in the attacker determining the secret and uploading changed classes, thereby achieving remote code execution in the remote application. Affected: Spring Boot 4.0.0–4.0.5 (fix 4.0.6), 3.5.0–3.5.13 (fix 3.5.14), 3.4.0–3.4.15 (fix 3.4.16), 3.3.0–3.3.18 (fix 3.3.19), 2.7.0–2.7.32 (fix 2.7.33); DevTools remote secret comparison. Versions that are no longer supported are also affected per vendor advisory. | |
| CVE-2026-5086 | Hig | 0.49 | 7.5 | 0.00 | Apr 13, 2026 | Crypt::SecretBuffer versions before 0.019 for Perl is suseceptible to timing attacks. For example, if Crypt::SecretBuffer was used to store and compare plaintext passwords, then discrepencies in timing could be used to guess the secret password. | |
| CVE-2025-70949 | Hig | 0.49 | 7.5 | 0.00 | Mar 5, 2026 | An observable timing discrepancy in @perfood/couch-auth v0.26.0 allows attackers to access sensitive information via a timing side-channel. | |
| CVE-2025-53940 | Hig | 0.48 | — | 0.00 | Jul 24, 2025 | Quiet is an alternative to team chat apps like Slack, Discord, and Element that does not require trusting a central server or running one's own. In versions 6.1.0-alpha.4 and below, Quiet's API for backend/frontend communication was using an insecure, not constant-time comparison function for token verification. This allowed for a potential timing attack where an attacker would try different token values and observe tiny differences in the response time (wrong characters fail faster) to guess the whole token one character at a time. This is fixed in version 6.0.1. | |
| CVE-2025-20067 | Med | 0.39 | 6.0 | 0.00 | Aug 12, 2025 | Observable timing discrepancy in firmware for some Intel(R) CSME and Intel(R) SPS may allow a privileged user to potentially enable information disclosure via local access. | |
| CVE-2025-7383 | Med | 0.38 | — | 0.00 | Aug 29, 2025 | Padding oracle attack vulnerability in Oberon microsystem AG’s Oberon PSA Crypto library in all versions since 1.0.0 and prior to 1.5.1 allows an attacker to recover plaintexts via timing measurements of AES-CBC PKCS#7 decrypt operations. | |
| CVE-2025-7071 | Med | 0.38 | — | 0.00 | Aug 29, 2025 | Padding oracle attack vulnerability in Oberon microsystem AG’s ocrypto library in all versions since 3.1.0 and prior to 3.9.2 allows an attacker to recover plaintexts via timing measurements of AES-CBC PKCS#7 decrypt operations. | |
| CVE-2025-48995 | Med | 0.38 | — | 0.00 | Jun 2, 2025 | SignXML is an implementation of the W3C XML Signature standard in Python. When verifying signatures with X509 certificate validation turned off and HMAC shared secret set (`signxml.XMLVerifier.verify(require_x509=False, hmac_key=...`), versions of SignXML prior to 4.0.4 are vulnerable to a potential timing attack. The verifier may leak information about the correct HMAC when comparing it with the user supplied hash, allowing users to reconstruct the correct HMAC for any data. | |
| CVE-2025-29780 | Med | 0.38 | — | 0.00 | Mar 14, 2025 | 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 `feldman_vss` library contains timing side-channel vulnerabilities in its matrix operations, specifically within the `_find_secure_pivot` function and potentially other parts of `_secure_matrix_solve`. These vulnerabilities are due to Python's execution model, which does not guarantee constant-time execution. An attacker with the ability to measure the execution time of these functions (e.g., through repeated calls with carefully crafted inputs) could potentially recover secret information used in the Verifiable Secret Sharing (VSS) scheme. The `_find_secure_pivot` function, used during Gaussian elimination in `_secure_matrix_solve`, attempts to find a non-zero pivot element. However, the conditional statement `if matrix[row][col] != 0 and row_random < min_value:` has execution time that depends on the value of `matrix[row][col]`. This timing difference can be exploited by an attacker. The `constant_time_compare` function in this file also does not provide a constant-time guarantee. The Python implementation of matrix operations in the _find_secure_pivot and _secure_matrix_solve functions cannot guarantee constant-time execution, potentially leaking information about secret polynomial coefficients. An attacker with the ability to make precise timing measurements of these operations could potentially extract secret information through statistical analysis of execution times, though practical exploitation would require significant expertise and controlled execution environments. Successful exploitation of these timing side-channels could allow an attacker to recover secret keys or other sensitive information protected by the VSS scheme. This could lead to a complete compromise of the shared secret. As of time of publication, no patched versions of Post-Quantum Secure Feldman's Verifiable Secret Sharing exist, but other mitigations are available. As acknowledged in the library's documentation, these vulnerabilities cannot be adequately addressed in pure Python. In the short term, consider using this library only in environments where timing measurements by attackers are infeasible. In the medium term, implement your own wrappers around critical operations using constant-time libraries in languages like Rust, Go, or C. In the long term, wait for the planned Rust implementation mentioned in the library documentation that will properly address these issues. | |
| CVE-2024-31074 | Med | 0.38 | 5.9 | 0.00 | Nov 13, 2024 | Observable timing discrepancy in some Intel(R) QAT Engine for OpenSSL software before version v1.6.1 may allow information disclosure via network access. | |
| CVE-2024-2467 | Med | 0.38 | 5.9 | 0.00 | Apr 25, 2024 | A timing-based side-channel flaw exists in the perl-Crypt-OpenSSL-RSA package, which could be sufficient to recover plaintext across a network in a Bleichenbacher-style attack. To achieve successful decryption, an attacker would have to be able to send a large number of trial messages. The vulnerability affects the legacy PKCS#1v1.5 RSA encryption padding mode. | |
| CVE-2024-3296 | Med | 0.38 | 5.9 | 0.00 | Apr 4, 2024 | A timing-based side-channel flaw exists in the rust-openssl package, which could be sufficient to recover a plaintext across a network in a Bleichenbacher-style attack. To achieve successful decryption, an attacker would have to be able to send a large number of trial messages for decryption. The vulnerability affects the legacy PKCS#1v1.5 RSA encryption padding mode. | |
| CVE-2025-52457 | Med | 0.37 | 5.7 | 0.00 | Nov 18, 2025 | Observable Timing Discrepancy (CWE-208) in HBUS devices may allow an attacker with physical access to the device to extract device-specific keys, potentially compromising further site security. This issue affects Command Centre Server: 9.30 prior to vCR9.30.251028a (distributed in 9.30.2881 (MR3)), 9.20 prior to vCR9.20.251028a (distributed in 9.20.3265 (MR5)), 9.10 prior to vCR9.10.251028a (distributed in 9.10.4135 (MR8)), all versions of 9.00 and prior. | |
| CVE-2025-59432 | Med | 0.36 | — | 0.00 | Sep 22, 2025 | SCRAM (Salted Challenge Response Authentication Mechanism) is part of the family of Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL, RFC 4422) authentication mechanisms. Prior to version 3.2, a timing attack vulnerability exists in the SCRAM Java implementation. The issue arises because Arrays.equals was used to compare secret values such as client proofs and server signatures. Since Arrays.equals performs a short-circuit comparison, the execution time varies depending on how many leading bytes match. This behavior could allow an attacker to perform a timing side-channel attack and potentially infer sensitive authentication material. All users relying on SCRAM authentication are impacted. This vulnerability has been patched in version 3.1 by replacing Arrays.equals with MessageDigest.isEqual, which ensures constant-time comparison. | |
| CVE-2024-42368 | Med | 0.35 | 6.5 | 0.00 | Aug 13, 2024 | OpenTelemetry, also known as OTel, is a vendor-neutral open source Observability framework for instrumenting, generating, collecting, and exporting telemetry data such as traces, metrics, and logs. The bearertokenauth extension's server authenticator performs a simple, non-constant time string comparison of the received & configured bearer tokens. This impacts anyone using the `bearertokenauth` server authenticator. Malicious clients with network access to the collector may perform a timing attack against a collector with this authenticator to guess the configured token, by iteratively sending tokens and comparing the response time. This would allow an attacker to introduce fabricated or bad data into the collector's telemetry pipeline. The observable timing vulnerability was fixed by using constant-time comparison in 0.107.0 | |
| CVE-2026-41418 | Med | 0.34 | 5.3 | 0.00 | Apr 24, 2026 | 4ga Boards is a boards system for realtime project management. Prior to 3.3.5, 4ga Boards is vulnerable to user enumeration via a timing side-channel in the login endpoint (POST /api/access-tokens). When an invalid username/email is provided, the server responds immediately (~17ms average). When a valid username/email is provided with an incorrect password, the server first performs a bcrypt.compareSync() operation (~74ms average) before responding. This ~4.4× timing difference is trivially detectable even over a network — a single request suffices. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.3.5. | |
| CVE-2025-22234 | Med | 0.34 | 5.3 | 0.00 | Jan 22, 2026 | The fix applied in CVE-2025-22228 inadvertently broke the timing attack mitigation implemented in DaoAuthenticationProvider. This can allow attackers to infer valid usernames or other authentication behavior via response-time differences under certain configurations. | |
| CVE-2025-0693 | Med | 0.34 | 5.3 | 0.00 | Jan 23, 2025 | Variable response times in the AWS Sign-in IAM user login flow allowed for the use of brute force enumeration techniques to identify valid IAM usernames in an arbitrary AWS account. | |
| CVE-2026-33006 | Med | 0.31 | 4.8 | 0.00 | May 4, 2026 | A timing attack against mod_auth_digest in Apache HTTP Server 2.4.66 allows a bypass of Digest authentication by a remote attacker. Users are recommended to upgrade to version 2.4.67, which fixes this issue. | |
| CVE-2026-41244 | Med | 0.31 | 4.7 | 0.00 | Apr 24, 2026 | Mojic is a CLI tool to transform readable C code into an unrecognizable chaotic stream of emojis. Prior to 2.1.4, the CipherEngine uses a standard equality operator (!==) to verify the HMAC-SHA256 integrity seal during the decryption phase. This creates an Observable Timing Discrepancy (CWE-208), allowing a potential attacker to bypass the file integrity check via a timing attack. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.1.4. |