CVE-2019-15809
Smart cards from the Athena SCS manufacturer, based on the Atmel Toolbox 00.03.11.05 and the AT90SC chip, contain a timing side channel in…
- 4.7MediumCVSS base score
- 0.47%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 59% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
Smart cards from the Athena SCS manufacturer, based on the Atmel Toolbox 00.03.11.05 and the AT90SC chip, contain a timing side channel in ECDSA signature generation. This allows a local attacker, able to measure the duration of hundreds to thousands of signing operations, to compute the private key used. The issue occurs because the Atmel Toolbox 00.03.11.05 contains two versions of ECDSA signature functions, described as fast and secure, but the affected cards chose to use the fast version, which leaks the bit length of the random nonce via timing. This affects Athena IDProtect 010b.0352.0005, Athena IDProtect 010e.1245.0002, Athena IDProtect 0106.0130.0401, Athena IDProtect 010e.1245.0002, Valid S/A IDflex V 010b.0352.0005, SafeNet eToken 4300 010e.1245.0002, TecSec Armored Card 010e.0264.0001, and TecSec Armored Card 108.0264.0001.
Timeline
ID reserved
By mitre
- 35 days later
· 35 days later
Published
- 5 years later
· 5 years later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVDNVD · Modified | 3.1 | Medium4.7 | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.47% · top 59% of all CVEs (11 Nov 2026)
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 4.7.
Affected products
n/a
- affected n/a
References
References6
- https://eprint.iacr.org/2011/232.pdf (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://tches.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/7337 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://www.ssi.gouv.fr/certification_cc/bibliotheque-cryptographique-atmel-toolbox-00-03-11-05/ (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Cryptographic-Algorithm-Validation-Program/details?source=ECDSA&number=214 (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
- [oss-security] 20191002 Minerva: ECDSA key recovery from bit-length leakage (opens in a new tab)mailing-listx_refsource_MLISTx_transferred
- https://minerva.crocs.fi.muni.cz/ (opens in a new tab)x_refsource_MISCx_transferred
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2019-6727 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2019-15809)Record last updated .