CVE-2026-31790 | Incorrect Failure Handling in RSA KEM RSASVE Encapsulation

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.

Published: 2026-04-07 Last update: 2026-05-12 Assigner: [email protected] Source: [email protected]
NVD Status：Modified，CVE State: published
View at NVD, CVE.org, EUVD

CVE-2026-31790 is rated Low Risk (30.5/100): CVSS High severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.01%). Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2026-31790

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-04-08 — 0.01% —

Full EPSS history (1 record total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2026-31790

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.5 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network—not just someone sitting at the machine.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:N)
No account or special rights needed—anonymous or random user is enough.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
 3.9 3.6 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2026-31790

GitHub Security Advisory for CVE-2026-31790

GHSA-vgxx-5xj5-q97x · Severity: high — Issue summary: Applications using RSASVE key encapsulation to establish a secret encryption key...

OS Trackers for CVE-2026-31790

vendor priority summary link
alpine — CVE-2026-31790: 1 source package rows (openssl); 5 state rows across 5 repos (3.20-main, 3.21-main, 3.22-main, 3.23-main, edge-main); fixed 5, open 0. https://security.alpinelinux.org/vuln/CVE-2026-31790
debian unimportant CVE-2026-31790 unimportant priority: Debian including 1 source packages (openssl), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-31790
redhat medium — https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-31790
suse medium CVE-2026-31790 severity moderate: SUSE including 379 source package names (1.1.2-2.16:libopenssl3-3.2.3-150700.5.31.1, 1.1.2-2.16:openssl-3-3.2.3-150700.5.31.1, …), 765 product×package rows across 95 product lines (Container private-registry/harbor-core, Container private-registry/harbor-exporter, … (95 product lines)): Fixed 364, Known Affected 231, Known Not Affected 163, First Fixed 7. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-31790/
ubuntu medium CVE-2026-31790 medium priority: Ubuntu including 5 source packages (edk2, nodejs, openssl, openssl-fips, openssl1.0), 32 status rows across 8 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): not-affected 16, DNE 6, needs-triage 4, released 4, needed 2. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-31790

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2026-31790

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
openssl openssl >= 3.0.0, < 3.0.20 cpe:2.3:a:openssl:openssl:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
openssl openssl >= 3.3.0, < 3.3.7 cpe:2.3:a:openssl:openssl:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
openssl openssl >= 3.4.0, < 3.4.5 cpe:2.3:a:openssl:openssl:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
openssl openssl >= 3.5.0, < 3.5.6 cpe:2.3:a:openssl:openssl:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
openssl openssl >= 3.6.0, < 3.6.2 cpe:2.3:a:openssl:openssl:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2026-31790

cvelogic Threat Intelligence