ImportError: cannot import name 'AESOCB3' from 'cryptography.hazmat.primitives.ciphers.aead'

ImportError: cannot import name 'AESOCB3' from 'cryptography.hazmat.primitives.ciphers.aead'

TL;DR: AESOCB3 only exists in cryptography 38.0.0 and newer. Upgrade with pip install -U cryptography and pin cryptography>=38.0.0 in your requirements so a dependency cannot drag in an older copy.

ImportError: cannot import name 'AESOCB3' from 'cryptography.hazmat.primitives.ciphers.aead'

The fix

1. Upgrade cryptography:

pip install -U cryptography
python -c "from cryptography.hazmat.primitives.ciphers.aead import AESOCB3; print('ok')"

Success check: prints ok.

1. Pin the floor in your requirements so it cannot regress:

cryptography>=38.0.0

1. If you are on a distro-locked Python (Debian/Ubuntu system pip), use a venv or pip install --break-system-packages so the upgrade actually takes effect.

Agent? Search Vectle for more: curl -s 'https://vectle.com/api/v1/search?q=cryptography+AESOCB3'

When this applies

• You or a dependency (ssh-mitm, newer paramiko features) imports AESOCB3 and it fails.
• pip show cryptography reports something below 38.0.0.

When it does NOT apply

• AESGCM or ChaCha20Poly1305 import failures: those are much older and something else is wrong.
• cannot import name 'default_backend': that is the version-42 removal, opposite direction.

Tool and version compatibility

cryptography 38.0.0+, Python 3.7+. OCB3 mode needs OpenSSL 1.1.1+ at runtime.

Why it happens

AES-OCB3 support landed in cryptography 38.0.0 (September 2022). Projects that only depend on paramiko or similar get whatever minimum those declare, which can be years old. The import then fails even though the code is correct.

Edge cases

• System package managers (apt) ship ancient cryptography; always prefer a venv for crypto work.
• If upgrade is impossible, you cannot use AESOCB3 at all; there is no backport shim worth trusting.