diff --git a/components/mbedtls/Kconfig b/components/mbedtls/Kconfig
index 899ad410a9d..38bd1e9086d 100644
--- a/components/mbedtls/Kconfig
+++ b/components/mbedtls/Kconfig
@@ -540,6 +540,31 @@ menu "mbedTLS"
             priority level and any level from 1 to 3 can be selected (based on the availability).
             Note: Higher value indicates high interrupt priority.
 
+    menu "Security hardening"
+
+        config MBEDTLS_CONSTANT_TIME_PRIME_GEN
+            bool "Constant-time prime generation"
+            default y
+            help
+                Use mbedtls' constant-time small-factor test (a constant-time
+                GCD against the product of all odd primes up to 997) when
+                generating prime numbers, e.g. during RSA key generation.
+
+                The constant-time implementation avoids a timing side channel
+                in prime generation, but it makes RSA key generation roughly
+                ten times slower, and its long non-yielding software
+                computations can starve the idle task and trigger the task
+                watchdog, so key generation code may need a larger watchdog
+                timeout or the watchdog disabled.
+
+                If disabled, the variable-time trial division that mbedtls
+                used before version 3.6.7 is used instead, restoring key
+                generation performance. Only consider disabling this if no
+                untrusted code running on the device could observe the timing
+                of key generation operations.
+
+    endmenu # Security hardening
+
     config MBEDTLS_HARDWARE_SHA
         bool "Enable hardware SHA acceleration"
         default y
diff --git a/components/mbedtls/mbedtls b/components/mbedtls/mbedtls
index 64c8e14bffd..2b96dd8eebe 160000
--- a/components/mbedtls/mbedtls
+++ b/components/mbedtls/mbedtls
@@ -1 +1 @@
-Subproject commit 64c8e14bffd76abaec7a04f9e44aba00a9aad1f5
+Subproject commit 2b96dd8eebe880f304c69976b3c2fa0c5100cbb6
diff --git a/components/mbedtls/port/include/mbedtls/esp_config.h b/components/mbedtls/port/include/mbedtls/esp_config.h
index a2df5264e02..2aa5bd9422c 100644
--- a/components/mbedtls/port/include/mbedtls/esp_config.h
+++ b/components/mbedtls/port/include/mbedtls/esp_config.h
@@ -212,6 +212,17 @@
 #undef MBEDTLS_MPI_MUL_MPI_ALT
 #endif
 
+/* mbedtls 3.6.7 made the small-factor test used in prime generation
+ * constant-time, which slows RSA key generation down roughly tenfold and
+ * starves the idle task (the computation never yields the CPU). The
+ * constant-time variant is the default; when it is explicitly disabled,
+ * fall back to the variable-time trial division from earlier releases. See
+ * MBEDTLS_MPI_PRIME_SIEVE_VARIABLE_TIME in library/bignum.c.
+ */
+#ifndef CONFIG_MBEDTLS_CONSTANT_TIME_PRIME_GEN
+#define MBEDTLS_MPI_PRIME_SIEVE_VARIABLE_TIME
+#endif
+
 #ifdef CONFIG_MBEDTLS_ATCA_HW_ECDSA_SIGN
 #define MBEDTLS_ECDSA_SIGN_ALT
 #endif
diff --git a/components/mbedtls/test_apps/main/test_rsa.c b/components/mbedtls/test_apps/main/test_rsa.c
index 457caaa45d6..f81b4084f0c 100644
--- a/components/mbedtls/test_apps/main/test_rsa.c
+++ b/components/mbedtls/test_apps/main/test_rsa.c
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
  * Focus on testing functionality where we use ESP32 hardware
  * accelerated crypto features
  *
- * SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2021-2025 Espressif Systems (Shanghai) CO LTD
+ * SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2021-2026 Espressif Systems (Shanghai) CO LTD
  *
  * SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
  */
@@ -570,6 +570,12 @@ static void rsa_key_operations(int keysize, bool check_performance, bool generat
 }
 
 
+/* With constant-time prime generation the RSA-2048 key generation below takes
+ * over a minute on most targets (~86 s on ESP32-S3), exceeding the test
+ * timeout and starving the task watchdog, so only run it with the faster
+ * variable-time implementation.
+ */
+#if !CONFIG_MBEDTLS_CONSTANT_TIME_PRIME_GEN
 TEST_CASE("mbedtls RSA Generate Key", "[mbedtls][timeout=60]")
 {
 
@@ -607,5 +613,6 @@ TEST_CASE("mbedtls RSA Generate Key", "[mbedtls][timeout=60]")
 #endif // CONFIG_MBEDTLS_MPI_USE_INTERRUPT && CONFIG_ESP_TASK_WDT_EN && !CONFIG_ESP_TASK_WDT_INIT
 
 }
+#endif // !CONFIG_MBEDTLS_CONSTANT_TIME_PRIME_GEN
 
 #endif // CONFIG_MBEDTLS_HARDWARE_MPI