CVE-2023-5981

HIGHNVD 5.97.4▲
EchelonGraph scoreMEDIUM confidence

Score 7.4 from GitHub Security Advisory (severity: HIGH) published 2023-11-28. NVD baseline CVSS 5.9; sources differ by 1.5.

Triggered by: GitHub Security Advisory CVSS
Sources: epss, ghsa, nvd
7.4EG
EchelonGraph verdictMonitorLow exploitation likelihood right now — keep watching.
  • Lower severity and no public exploit yet
CISA-KEV: Not listedEPSS PROB: 1.3%CVSS: 5.9Exploit: None knownExposed services: Not assessed

A fix is available — apply it.

A vulnerability was found that the response times to malformed ciphertexts in RSA-PSK ClientKeyExchange differ from response times of ciphertexts with correct PKCS#1 v1.5 padding.

CVSS v3
5.9
EG Score
7.4HIGHmedium confidence
EG Risk
38
EG Risk 38/100CISA SSVC

EG Risk is EchelonGraph's 0–100 priority score: it fuses intrinsic severity with real-world exploitation and automatability so you can rank equal-severity CVEs and fix the most dangerous first. Higher = act sooner. Distinct from the 0–10 EG Score (severity).

How it’s computed
Severity74% × 45%
Exploitation1% × 40%
Automatability30% × 15%
CISA SSVC: Track at low or medium mission impact; Track or Attend at high (mission-essential systems).
Action: A fix is available. Apply it within your standard update timelines at low or medium mission impact and sooner than that at high.
EPSS PROB
1.3%
EPSS %ILE
68th
KEV
Not listed

CISA SSVCTrack at low or medium mission impact; Track or Attend at high (mission-essential systems).

A fix is available. Apply it within your standard update timelines at low or medium mission impact and sooner than that at high.

Exploitation none (no KEV listing, exploit record or EPSS ≥ 50%) · Automatable unknown (not published for this CVE) · Technical impact partial (CVSS below 9.0). Mission impact is CISA's Mission & Well-being decision point, and only you can judge it: high means the affected system is essential to your organisation's mission, or its compromise could cause irreversible harm to people. CISA's decision table

Published

November 28, 2023

Last Modified

June 17, 2026

References (24)

Vendor Advisories for CVE-2023-5981(3)

These vendors published their own advisory mentioning this CVE — often with vendor-specific remediation steps + affected product lists not in NVD.

Patch Availability(9)

Vendor / EcosystemFix (by version range) / PatchReleasedSource
ubuntulibgnutlsxx28 (3.5.18-1ubuntu1.6+esm1) @ bionic2026-05-24ubuntu
ubuntulibgnutls30 (3.8.1-4ubuntu1.1) @ mantic2026-05-24ubuntu
redhatopenshift-logging/vector-rhel9:v0.28.1-562024-05-01redhat
redhatodf4/rook-ceph-rhel9-operator:v4.15.0-1032024-03-19redhat
redhatgnutls-0:3.7.6-23.el9_3.32024-01-29redhat
redhatgnutls-0:3.7.6-21.el9_2.12024-01-25redhat
redhatgnutls-0:3.6.16-7.el8_8.12024-01-24redhat
redhatgnutls-0:3.6.16-5.el8_6.22024-01-22redhat
redhatgnutls-0:3.6.16-8.el8_92024-01-10redhat

Patches are aggregated from vendor advisories (Red Hat, Microsoft, Cisco, GitHub) and package ecosystems (OSV, GHSA). Multiple rows for the same upstream release have been deduplicated.

Affected Packages

(12 across 12 ecosystems)
Alpine:v3.18(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls—
  • every version up to 3.8.3-r0: fixed in 3.8.3-r0
—
Alpine:v3.19(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls—
  • every version up to 3.8.3-r0: fixed in 3.8.3-r0
—
Alpine:v3.20(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls—
  • every version up to 3.8.3-r0: fixed in 3.8.3-r0
—
Alpine:v3.21(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls—
  • every version up to 3.8.3-r0: fixed in 3.8.3-r0
—
Alpine:v3.22(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls—
  • every version up to 3.8.3-r0: fixed in 3.8.3-r0
—
Alpine:v3.23(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls—
  • every version up to 3.8.3-r0: fixed in 3.8.3-r0
—
Alpine:v3.24(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls—
  • every version up to 3.8.3-r0: fixed in 3.8.3-r0
—
Debian:10(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls283.6.7-4 ... 3.6.7-4+deb10u9 (11 versions)
  • every version up to 3.6.7-4+deb10u11: fixed in 3.6.7-4+deb10u11
—
Debian:11(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls283.7.1-5, 3.7.1-5+deb11u1, 3.7.1-5+deb11u2, 3.7.1-5+deb11u3
  • every version up to 3.7.1-5+deb11u4: fixed in 3.7.1-5+deb11u4
—
Debian:12(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls283.7.9-2
  • every version up to 3.7.9-2+deb12u1: fixed in 3.7.9-2+deb12u1
—
Debian:13(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls28—
  • every version up to 3.8.2-1: fixed in 3.8.2-1
—
Debian:14(1)
PackageVulnerable rangeFix by version rangeDependents
gnutls28—
  • every version up to 3.8.2-1: fixed in 3.8.2-1
—

Weakness Classification(2)

MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.

Additional Vendor Advisories

(7)

Vendors that published advisories for this CVE beyond the curated set above. Broader coverage but minimal per-row detail — click through for the original advisory.

Data Freshness Timeline

(refreshed 7× in last 7d / 30× in last 30d)

Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.

Showing the most recent 100 of 178 total refreshes for this CVE.

  1. 2026-10-09 20:05 UTCEPSS rescore
  2. 2026-10-08 17:06 UTCEPSS rescore
  3. 2026-10-07 23:46 UTCEPSS rescore
  4. 2026-10-06 15:15 UTCEPSS rescore
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  8. 2026-10-01 19:48 UTCEPSS rescore
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  10. 2026-09-30 16:38 UTCEG score recompute
  11. 2026-09-30 15:01 UTCEPSS rescore
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  18. 2026-09-23 13:46 UTCEPSS rescore
  19. 2026-09-22 15:52 UTCOSV refresh
  20. 2026-09-20 20:14 UTCEPSS rescore
  21. 2026-09-20 20:14 UTCEPSS rescore
  22. 2026-09-18 19:26 UTCEPSS rescore
  23. 2026-09-16 14:06 UTCEPSS rescore
  24. 2026-09-16 05:11 UTCEPSS rescore
  25. 2026-09-16 05:11 UTCEPSS rescore
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  1. 2026-09-15 03:08 UTCEPSS rescore
  2. 2026-09-13 16:45 UTCEPSS rescore
  3. 2026-09-12 14:58 UTCEPSS rescore
  4. 2026-09-11 14:51 UTCEPSS rescore
  5. 2026-09-11 09:34 UTCEPSS rescore
  6. 2026-09-08 21:58 UTCEPSS rescore
  7. 2026-09-07 15:59 UTCEPSS rescore
  8. 2026-09-06 13:46 UTCEPSS rescore
  9. 2026-09-05 15:26 UTCEPSS rescore
  10. 2026-09-04 13:58 UTCEPSS rescore
  11. 2026-09-04 05:04 UTCEPSS rescore
  12. 2026-09-03 12:29 UTCOSV refresh
  13. 2026-09-02 14:10 UTCEPSS rescore
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  15. 2026-09-01 04:36 UTCEPSS rescore
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  18. 2026-08-28 21:39 UTCEPSS rescore
  19. 2026-08-27 14:23 UTCEPSS rescore
  20. 2026-08-26 14:44 UTCEPSS rescore
  21. 2026-08-25 13:47 UTCEPSS rescore
  22. 2026-08-23 00:17 UTCEPSS rescore
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  24. 2026-08-21 23:47 UTCEPSS rescore
  25. 2026-08-20 22:53 UTCEPSS rescore
  26. 2026-08-19 17:02 UTCEPSS rescore
  27. 2026-08-18 13:46 UTCEPSS rescore
  28. 2026-08-17 01:48 UTCOSV refresh
  29. 2026-08-16 14:54 UTCEPSS rescore
  30. 2026-08-16 02:12 UTCEPSS rescore
  31. 2026-08-15 01:28 UTCEPSS rescore
  32. 2026-08-13 21:58 UTCEPSS rescore
  33. 2026-08-12 13:49 UTCEPSS rescore
  34. 2026-08-11 13:40 UTCEPSS rescore
  35. 2026-08-10 23:58 UTCEPSS rescore
  36. 2026-08-09 13:44 UTCEPSS rescore
  37. 2026-08-08 16:35 UTCEPSS rescore
  38. 2026-08-07 16:25 UTCEPSS rescore
  39. 2026-08-06 13:45 UTCEPSS rescore
  40. 2026-08-05 19:15 UTCEPSS rescore
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  42. 2026-08-04 10:36 UTCEPSS rescore
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  44. 2026-08-02 02:25 UTCEPSS rescore
  45. 2026-08-02 02:25 UTCEPSS rescore
  46. 2026-08-01 20:06 UTCOSV refresh
  47. 2026-08-01 04:14 UTCEPSS rescore
  48. 2026-07-30 16:26 UTCEPSS rescore
  49. 2026-07-30 01:29 UTCEPSS rescore
  50. 2026-07-28 15:34 UTCEPSS rescore
  51. 2026-07-28 15:34 UTCEPSS rescore
  52. 2026-07-26 14:53 UTCEPSS rescore
  53. 2026-07-25 14:16 UTCEPSS rescore
  54. 2026-07-24 14:16 UTCEPSS rescore
  55. 2026-07-23 14:16 UTCEPSS rescore
  56. 2026-07-23 02:30 UTCEG score recompute
  57. 2026-07-22 23:16 UTCEG score recompute
  58. 2026-07-22 14:07 UTCEPSS rescore
  59. 2026-07-22 14:07 UTCEPSS rescore
  60. 2026-07-21 15:23 UTCEPSS rescore
  61. 2026-07-20 17:06 UTCEPSS rescore
  62. 2026-07-19 02:27 UTCEPSS rescore
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  64. 2026-07-18 10:03 UTCEPSS rescore
  65. 2026-07-18 10:03 UTCEPSS rescore
  66. 2026-07-16 17:01 UTCEPSS rescore
  67. 2026-07-15 16:56 UTCEPSS rescore
  68. 2026-07-15 03:19 UTCOSV refresh
  69. 2026-07-15 01:59 UTCEPSS rescore
  70. 2026-07-15 01:59 UTCEPSS rescore
  71. 2026-07-13 22:28 UTCEPSS rescore
  72. 2026-07-13 22:28 UTCEPSS rescore
  73. 2026-07-13 06:11 UTCEPSS rescore
  74. 2026-07-12 05:45 UTCEPSS rescore
  75. 2026-07-12 05:45 UTCEPSS rescore

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Frequently asked(5)

What is CVE-2023-5981?
CVE-2023-5981 is a high vulnerability published on November 28, 2023. A vulnerability was found that the response times to malformed ciphertexts in RSA-PSK ClientKeyExchange differ from response times of ciphertexts with correct PKCS#1 v1.5 padding.
When was CVE-2023-5981 disclosed?
CVE-2023-5981 was first published on November 28, 2023, with the most recent update on June 17, 2026. EchelonGraph re-ingests CVE updates from NVD on a 2-hour cycle, so this page reflects the latest published state.
Is CVE-2023-5981 actively exploited?
CVE-2023-5981 is not currently on CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. FIRST EPSS estimates a 1.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days (68th percentile of EPSS-scored CVEs).
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2023-5981?
CVE-2023-5981 has a CVSS v3 base score of 5.9 (NVD). EchelonGraph synthesises NVD + CISA KEV + FIRST EPSS + GHSA into a combined EG score of 7.4 (HIGH).
How do I remediate CVE-2023-5981?
A fix for CVE-2023-5981 is available: update to the fixed version the vendor names in its advisory. The vendor advisories EchelonGraph has for CVE-2023-5981 are linked in the Vendor Advisories panel on this page.

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