Blog

"Prevention is cheaper than a breach"

Home / Threats / CVE-2026-22698

CVE-2026-22698 - Elliptic Curves Plugin

CVE-2026-22698

RustCrypto: Elliptic Curves is general purpose Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) support, including types and traits for representing various elliptic curve forms, scalars, points, and public/secret keys composed thereof. In versions 0.14.0-pre.0 and 0.14.0-rc.0, a critical vulnerability exists in the SM2 Public Key Encryption (PKE) implementation where the ephemeral nonce k is generated with severely reduced entropy. A unit mismatch error causes the nonce generation function to request only 32 bits of randomness instead of the expected 256 bits. This reduces the security of the encryption from a 128-bit level to a trivial 16-bit level, allowing a practical attack to recover the nonce k and decrypt any ciphertext given only the public key and ciphertext. This issue has been patched via commit e4f7778.

CVE-2026-22698

HIGH CVSS 8.7 Published 2026-01-10 Updated 2026-01-13
AI Risk Critical (98/100) Active Exploit: Likely Published Exploit: Public exploit references found Priority: P1 Immediate
Severity Band HIGH
CVSS Vector CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
Affected Components 1
Reference Links 6
AI Risk Engine Critical (98/100)
Exploitability High
Active Exploitation Likely
Published Exploit Status Public exploit references found

Threat Timeline

  1. 2026-01-10 CVE published and first recorded in the threat feed.
  2. 2026-01-13 Record updated with latest vulnerability metadata.
  3. 2026-04-09 AI technical context refreshed for mitigation and impact guidance.
  4. Now Monitoring for follow-up changes, linked references, and new related CVEs.

AI Context

Machine-generated threat intelligence

AI Updated 12 days ago

AI enriched 12 days ago (2026-04-09 07:07 UTC)

Technical Summary

RustCrypto: Elliptic Curves is general purpose Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) support, including types and traits for representing various elliptic curve forms, scalars, points, and public/secret keys composed thereof. In versions 0.14.0-pre.0 and 0.14.0-rc.0, a critical vulnerability exists in the SM2 Public Key Encryption (PKE) implementation where the ephemeral nonce k is generated with severely reduced entropy. A unit mismatch error causes the nonce generation function to request only 32 bits of randomness instead of the expected 256 bits. This reduces…

Potential Impact

Severity is HIGH (CVSS 8.7). Depending on deployment context, affected components may be exposed to unauthorized actions or data integrity risk.

Exploitability Assessment

Exploitability is assessed as High based on published exploit references.

Primary risk drivers: published exploit references

Mitigation Recommendations

Validate affected product versions, prioritize patching, and monitor references for vendor remediation guidance. If immediate patching is not possible, apply compensating controls and limit exposure of vulnerable surfaces.

Detection & Monitoring

Track authentication anomalies, unexpected file writes, and suspicious plugin API activity around affected components.

Business Impact Lens

Prioritize remediation where affected components process customer data, admin sessions, or Internet-exposed workflows.

Affected Products

Elliptic Curves PLUGIN · elliptic-curves Affected: >= 0.14.0-pre.0, <= 0.14.0-pre.0 Fixed version not specified
Scroll to top