[dstebila]

Maintenance release of liboqs-python 0.16.0 carrying the fix for GHSA-w696-4vrr-x6x3 (ML-DSA signature forgery and ML-KEM shared-secret recovery when an application passes an empty or very short public key, fixed in #161). It still pairs with liboqs 0.16.0.

• Bump version 0.16.1-dev -> 0.16.0.2 (pyproject.toml); the runtime auto-installer maps this to the liboqs 0.16.0 tag.
• CHANGES.md: add the 0.16.0.2 section (Validate key and ciphertext lengths before passing them to liboqs #161, Fix StatefulSignature.free leaking the native OQS_SIG_STFL struct #160, Bump pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish to v1.14.2 #158).
• RELEASE.md: rewrite for 0.16.0.2, leading with the security fix and listing the behavior changes that can make existing code raise (wrong-length inputs and empty secret_key raise ValueError; StatefulSignature methods raise RuntimeError after free()).

The advisory will be published at the same time as the release.

Testing

Run locally on macOS against liboqs 0.16.0 cloned from the 0.16.0 tag and built with the CI flags (shared, STFL LMS/XMSS keygen enabled):

• examples/kem.py, sig.py, rand.py, stfl_sig.py: all pass
• nose2 --verbose: 1683 tests, OK
• Auto-installer: with no liboqs present, importing 0.16.0.2 cloned the liboqs 0.16.0 tag (5a1a854), built and installed it, and loaded liboqs 0.16.0

After merge

1. Tag 0.16.0.2 (publish_pypi.yml publishes four-part tags to PyPI).
2. Publish GHSA-w696-4vrr-x6x3 and create the GitHub release from RELEASE.md.
3. Bump the version back to 0.16.1-dev.

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