CVE-2026-22025

CryptoLib provides a software-only solution using the CCSDS Space Data Link Security Protocol - Extended Procedures (SDLS-EP) to secure communications between a spacecraft running the core Flight System (cFS) and a ground station. Prior to version 1.4.3, when the KMC server returns a non-200 HTTP status code, cryptography_encrypt() and cryptography_decrypt() return immediately without freeing previously allocated buffers. Each failed request leaks approximately 467 bytes. Repeated failures (from a malicious server or network issues) can gradually exhaust memory. This issue has been patched in version 1.4.3.

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.

Potential Mitigations

• Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
• For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
• When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
• To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.

References

• https://github.com/nasa/CryptoLib/commit/2372efd3da1ccb226b4297222e25f41ecc84821d
• https://github.com/nasa/CryptoLib/releases/tag/v1.4.3
• https://github.com/nasa/CryptoLib/security/advisories/GHSA-h74x-vwwr-mm5g