RHSA-2016:2582 — Security Advisory
Red Hat Security Advisory: nettle security and bug fix update
Severity
ModerateRed Hat Product Security
Products
Official CSAF product identity
Published · November 3, 2016
Updated · June 25, 2026
Topic
An update for nettle is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.
Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having a security impact of Moderate. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base score, which gives a detailed severity rating, is available for each vulnerability from the CVE link(s) in the References section.
Description
Nettle is a cryptographic library that is designed to fit easily in almost any context: In cryptographic toolkits for object-oriented languages, such as C++, Python, or Pike, in applications like lsh or GnuPG, or even in kernel space.
Security Fix(es):
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Multiple flaws were found in the way nettle implemented elliptic curve scalar multiplication. These flaws could potentially introduce cryptographic weaknesses into nettle's functionality. (CVE-2015-8803, CVE-2015-8804, CVE-2015-8805)
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It was found that nettle's RSA and DSA decryption code was vulnerable to cache-related side channel attacks. An attacker could use this flaw to recover the private key from a co-located virtual-machine instance. (CVE-2016-6489)
Additional Changes:
For detailed information on changes in this release, see the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 Release Notes linked from the References section.