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Signature verification with HMAC is vulnerable to a timing attack

Moderate
kislyuk published GHSA-gmhf-gg8w-jw42 Jun 1, 2025

Package

pip signxml (pip)

Affected versions

<4.0.4

Patched versions

4.0.4

Description

When verifying signatures with X509 certificate validation turned off and HMAC shared secret set (signxml.XMLVerifier.verify(require_x509=False, hmac_key=...), prior versions of SignXML 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.

Severity

Moderate

CVE ID

CVE-2025-48995

Weaknesses

Observable Timing Discrepancy

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. Learn more on MITRE.

Credits