Skip to content
OpenAdvisories

Weakness (CWE)

CWE-335: Incorrect Usage of Seeds in Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG)

Base Draft

The product uses a Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG) but does not correctly manage seeds.

More detail

PRNGs are deterministic and, while their output appears
random, they cannot actually create entropy. They rely on
cryptographically secure and unique seeds for entropy so
proper seeding is critical to the secure operation of the
PRNG.

Management of seeds could be broken down into two main areas:

-
(1) protecting seeds as cryptographic material (such as a cryptographic key);

-
(2) whenever possible, using a uniquely generated seed from
a cryptographically secure source

PRNGs require a seed as input to generate a stream of
numbers that are functionally indistinguishable from
random numbers. While the output is, in many cases,
sufficient for cryptographic uses, the output of any
PRNG is directly determined by the seed provided as
input. If the seed can be ascertained by a third party,
the entire output of the PRNG can be made known to
them. As such, the seed should be kept secret and
should ideally not be able to be guessed. For example,
the current time may be a poor seed. Knowing the
approximate time the PRNG was seeded greatly reduces
the possible key space.

Seeds do not necessarily need to be unique, but reusing seeds may open up attacks if the seed is discovered.

Source: MITRE CWE-335

All Critical High Medium Low Exploited only Public exploit

8 results · Clear filters · Feed

  • Medium 5.4
    CVE-2026-11730

    Insufficient session randomness vulnerability exists in certain NETGEAR EX Series Models

    Insufficient session randomness vulnerability in the listed NETGEAR Extender models allows a network-adjacent attacker having network access (such as WiFi credentials) to predict valid session identifiers and hijack an authenticated administrator session on t…

    NETGEAR EX6120 EX3700 Network devices
  • Medium 4.3
    CVE-2026-3503

    Fault injection attack with ML-DSA and ML-KEM on ARM

    Protection mechanism failure in wolfCrypt post-quantum implementations (ML-KEM and ML-DSA) in wolfSSL on ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers allows a physical attacker to compromise key material and/or cryptographic outcomes via induced transient faults that corrup…

    wolfSSL wolfSSL (wolfCrypt) wolfssl wolfssl Debian Ubuntu Alpine
  • Medium 5.7
    CVE-2025-52578

    Incorrect Usage of Seeds in Pseudo-Random Number Generator (CWE- 335) vulnerability in the High Sec ELM may allow a sop…

    Gallagher High Sec End of Line Module
  • Medium 6.6
    CVE-2024-55566

    ColPack 1.0.10 through 9a7293a has a predictable temporary file (located under /tmp with a name derived from an unseede…

    colpack colpack Debian Ubuntu
  • Medium 4.3
    CVE-2022-42159

    D-Link COVR 1200,1202,1203 v1.08 was discovered to have a predictable seed in a Pseudo-Random Number Generator.

  • Medium 5.5
    CVE-2022-31008

    Predictable credential obfuscation seed value used in rabbitmq-server

    RabbitMQ is a multi-protocol messaging and streaming broker. In affected versions the shovel and federation plugins perform URI obfuscation in their worker (link) state. The encryption key used to encrypt the URI was seeded with a predictable secret. This mea…

    rabbitmq rabbitmq-server rabbitmq-server rabbit_common Debian Ubuntu Hex
  • Medium 5.5
    CVE-2021-34600 Public exploit

    Telenot complex: Insecure AES Key Generation

    Telenot CompasX versions prior to 32.0 use a weak seed for random number generation leading to predictable AES keys used in the NFC tags used for local authorization of users. This may lead to total loss of trustworthiness of the installation.

    Telenot Electronic CompasX
  • Medium 5.3
    CVE-2018-14647 EPSS 11%

    Python's elementtree C accelerator failed to initialise Expat's hash salt during initialization. This could make it eas…

    The Python Project Python python3.4 python3.5 Debian Ubuntu Alpine