---
id: CVE-2026-97873
title: >-
  In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, the raw JCA provider's legacy PBES1
  (PKCS#5 scheme 1) and PKCS#12 PBE families ran their password-based key
  derivation with an iteration count taken from untrusted input without bounding
  it, so a sm…
summary: >-
  In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, the raw JCA provider's legacy PBES1
  (PKCS#5 scheme 1) and PKCS#12 PBE families ran their password-based key
  derivation with an iteration count taken from untrusted input without bounding
  it, so a sm…
severity: medium
cvss: 5.3
cvssVector: 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/U:Amber'
cwe:
  - CWE-770
vendor: Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc.
product: bcprov
affected:
  - bcprov < 1.86
  - bcprov-lts8on >= 2.73.0 < 2.73.13
published: '2026-10-03'
updated: '2026-10-03'
sourceUpdated: '2026-10-03T09:17:06.280'
source: NVD
sourceUrl: 'https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-97873'
references:
  - url: >-
      https://github.com/bcgit/bc-java/commit/766a31026ac24ed3c6cad8662058ba450c338da1
    label: 91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630
  - url: 'https://github.com/bcgit/bc-java/wiki/CVE%E2%80%902026%E2%80%9097873'
    label: 91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630
tags:
  - nvd
  - cve.org
cvssSource: cna
ingestedAt: '2026-10-03T08:41:32.841Z'
---

## Overview

In Bouncy Castle for Java before 1.86, the raw JCA provider's legacy PBES1 (PKCS#5 scheme 1) and PKCS#12 PBE families ran their password-based key derivation with an iteration count taken from untrusted input without bounding it, so a small input could dictate an arbitrary amount of work before anything could be verified. The AlgorithmParameters implementations (PKCS12PBE and its object identifier aliases, and PBKDF1) accepted any count from an encoded PKCS12PBEParams or PBEParameter, narrowing a value beyond the int range with intValue(), and every Cipher, Mac and SecretKeyFactory in these families derived with whatever count it was given, including one decoded by another provider's AlgorithmParameters, as when javax.crypto.EncryptedPrivateKeyInfo.getKeySpec() decrypts a PKCS#12 PBE-protected private key with BC. Both the parameter parse and the derivations now reject a negative or over-limit count under the org.bouncycastle.pbe.max_iteration_count property (default 10,000,000) that already bounded PBKDF2 (CVE-2026-17508), and the parse rejects a count beyond the int range rather than narrowing it. This issue also affects Bouncy Castle for Java LTS before 2.73.13.

## Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.