8.7 HIGH
- CVSS version (CVSS): 4.0
- Attack Vector (AV): Network (N)
- Attack Complexity (AC): Low (L)
- Attack Requirement (AT): None (N)
- Privileges Required (PR): None (N)
- User Interaction (UI): None (N)
- Vulnerable System Impact Confidentiality (VC): None (N)
- Vulnerable System Impact Integrity (VI): None (N)
- Vulnerable System Impact Availability (VA): High (H)
- Subsequent System Impact Confidentiality (SC): None (N)
- Subsequent System Impact Integrity (SI): None (N)
- Subsequent System Impact Availability (SA): None (N)
- Provider Urgency (U): Amber (Amber)
- Modified Attack Vector (MAV): Network (N)
- Modified Attack Complexity (MAC): Low (L)
- Modified Attack Requirement (MAT): None (N)
- Modified Privileges Required (MPR): None (N)
- Modified User Interaction (MUI): None (N)
- Modified Vulnerable System Impact Confidentiality (MVC): None (N)
- Modified Vulnerable System Impact Integrity (MVI): None (N)
- Modified Vulnerable System Impact Availability (MVA): High (H)
- Modified Subsequent System Impact Confidentiality (MSC): Negligible (N)
- Modified Subsequent System Impact Integrity (MSI): Negligible (N)
- Modified Subsequent System Impact Availability (MSA): Negligible (N)
- Safety (S): Not Defined (X)
- Automatable (AU): Not Defined (X)
- Recovery (R): Not Defined (X)
- Value Density (V): Not Defined (X)
- Vulnerability Response Effort (RE): Not Defined (X)
- Confidentiality Req. (CR): Not Defined (X)
- Integrity Req. (IR): Not Defined (X)
- Availability Req. (AR): Not Defined (X)
- Exploit Maturity (E): Not Defined (X)
Activity log
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Zeroisation of sensitive key material on garbage collection relies on finalization
In Bouncy Castle for Java FIPS (BC-FJA) before bc-fips 1.0.2.7 (1.0.X series), 2.0.2 (2.0.X series) and 2.1.3 (2.1.X series), sensitive key material held by the AES and DESede engines, the SP 800-90A DRBGs, SymmetricSecretKey and the PBKD and scrypt parameter classes was zeroised on garbage collection by overriding Object.finalize. Finalization runs at an unspecified time and in an unspecified order and is serviced by a single finalizer thread, so where objects carrying a finalizer are allocated faster than that thread retires them the pending-finalization queue grows without bound: disposal falls arbitrarily far behind, which can contribute to an OutOfMemoryError under load, and the key material those objects hold stays resident in the heap for as long as they are queued, defeating the purpose of the zeroisation. The behaviour was not a problem on Java 8 or Java 11; it is later JVMs, on which finalization has been deprecated and progressively de-emphasised, where it becomes one. Disposal of these classes now runs from a java.lang.ref.Cleaner registered in the multi-release jdk1.9 overlay, so on Java 9 and later it no longer depends on the finalizer being scheduled. Bouncy Castle for Java (bcprov) and Bouncy Castle for Java LTS are not affected, as neither implements the finalizer-based zeroisation scheme.
References
Affected products
- <2.0.2
- <1.0.2.7
- <2.1.3