Vulnerability in Openssl
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.
EPSS: 0.012 (65.1th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N.
Affected products
- Openssl — versions 3.6.0, 3.5.0, 3.4.0
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- openssl-security@openssl.org (vendor-advisory, Vendor Advisory)
- openssl-security@openssl.org (Patch, patch)
- openssl-security@openssl.org (Patch, patch)
- openssl-security@openssl.org (Patch, patch)
- openssl-security@openssl.org (Patch, patch)
- openssl-security@openssl.org (Patch, patch)
- 0b142b55-0307-4c5a-b3c9-f314f3fb7c5e
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2026-31790?
- CVE-2026-31790 is a high-severity vulnerability in Openssl, classified under Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2026-04-07.
- How severe is CVE-2026-31790?
- High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.