CVE-2026-31790

HIGHCVSS 7.5/10EPSS 0.98%

Last modified

CVE-2026-31790 is a high-severity vulnerability rated 7.5/10 on the CVSS scale. Issue summary: Applications using RSASVE key encapsulation to establish a secret encryption key can send contents of an uninitialized memory buffer to a malicious peer. Impact summary: The uninitialized buffer might contain sensitive data from the previous execution of the application process which leads to sensitive data leakage to an attacker. RSA_public_encrypt() returns the number of bytes written on success and -1 on error. The affected code tests only whether the return value is non-zero. As a result, if RSA encryption fails, encapsulation can still return success to the caller, set the output lengths, and leave the caller to use the contents of the ciphertext buffer as if a valid KEM ciphertext had been produced. If applications use EVP_PKEY_encapsulate() with RSA/RSASVE on an attacker-supplied invalid RSA public key without first validating that key, then this may cause stale or uninitialized contents of the caller-provided ciphertext buffer to be disclosed to the attacker in place of the KEM ciphertext. As a workaround calling EVP_PKEY_public_check() or EVP_PKEY_public_check_quick() before EVP_PKEY_encapsulate() will mitigate the issue. The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.1 and 3.0 are affected by this issue.. EPSS estimates a 0.98% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

Description

Issue summary: Applications using RSASVE key encapsulation to establish a secret encryption key can send contents of an uninitialized memory buffer to a malicious peer. Impact summary: The uninitialized buffer might contain sensitive data from the previous execution of the application process which leads to sensitive data leakage to an attacker. RSA_public_encrypt() returns the number of bytes written on success and -1 on error. The affected code tests only whether the return value is non-zero. As a result, if RSA encryption fails, encapsulation can still return success to the caller, set the output lengths, and leave the caller to use the contents of the ciphertext buffer as if a valid KEM ciphertext had been produced. If applications use EVP_PKEY_encapsulate() with RSA/RSASVE on an attacker-supplied invalid RSA public key without first validating that key, then this may cause stale or uninitialized contents of the caller-provided ciphertext buffer to be disclosed to the attacker in place of the KEM ciphertext. As a workaround calling EVP_PKEY_public_check() or EVP_PKEY_public_check_quick() before EVP_PKEY_encapsulate() will mitigate the issue. The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.1 and 3.0 are affected by this issue.

Metrics

CVSS 3.1
7.5/10

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

EPSS Probability
0.98%

57.8th percentile

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. Learn more

Weakness Enumeration

Affected Software

VendorProductVersions
OpensslOpenssl>= 3.0.0, < 3.0.20
OpensslOpenssl>= 3.3.0, < 3.3.7
OpensslOpenssl>= 3.4.0, < 3.4.5
OpensslOpenssl>= 3.5.0, < 3.5.6
OpensslOpenssl>= 3.6.0, < 3.6.2

References

Timeline

Published
Last Modified
Status
Modified

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2026-31790?
Issue summary: Applications using RSASVE key encapsulation to establish a secret encryption key can send contents of an uninitialized memory buffer to a malicious peer. Impact summary: The uninitialized buffer might contain sensitive data from the previous execution of the application process which leads to sensitive data leakage to an attacker. RSA_public_encrypt() returns the number of bytes written on success and -1 on error. The affected code tests only whether the return value is non-zero. As a result, if RSA encryption fails, encapsulation can still return success to the caller, set the output lengths, and leave the caller to use the contents of the ciphertext buffer as if a valid KEM ciphertext had been produced. If applications use EVP_PKEY_encapsulate() with RSA/RSASVE on an attacker-supplied invalid RSA public key without first validating that key, then this may cause stale or uninitialized contents of the caller-provided ciphertext buffer to be disclosed to the attacker in place of the KEM ciphertext. As a workaround calling EVP_PKEY_public_check() or EVP_PKEY_public_check_quick() before EVP_PKEY_encapsulate() will mitigate the issue. The FIPS modules in 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.1 and 3.0 are affected by this issue.
How severe is CVE-2026-31790?
CVE-2026-31790 has a CVSS score of 7.5/10 (HIGH severity). The EPSS model estimates a 0.98% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.
How do I fix CVE-2026-31790?
Check the vendor references and advisories linked above for patched versions and mitigation guidance. You can also run a Strix scan to test if your systems are affected.

Are you affected by CVE-2026-31790?

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Source: NVD / NIST