OpenSSL 3.6+ RSA KEM Buffer Leak via EVP_PKEY_encapsulate
CVE-2026-31790 Published on April 7, 2026
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.
Vulnerability Analysis
CVE-2026-31790 is exploitable with network access, and does not require authorization privileges or user interaction. This vulnerability is considered to have a low attack complexity. The potential impact of an exploit of this vulnerability is considered to have a high impact on confidentiality, with no impact on integrity and availability.
Weakness Type
Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions
The software does not check or incorrectly checks for unusual or exceptional conditions that are not expected to occur frequently during day to day operation of the software.
Products Associated with CVE-2026-31790
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Affected Versions
OpenSSL:- Version 3.6.0 and below 3.6.2 is affected.
- Version 3.5.0 and below 3.5.6 is affected.
- Version 3.4.0 and below 3.4.5 is affected.
- Version 3.3.0 and below 3.3.7 is affected.
- Version 3.0.0 and below 3.0.20 is affected.
Exploit Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.