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Critical · 9.1 CVE-2018-16115 EUVD-2018-0643GHSA-mr95-9rr4-668f

Cryptographically Weak Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG) in akka-actor

Published Aug 29, 2018 · Updated Aug 5, 2024 · Assigned by mitre

Description

Lightbend Akka 2.5.x before 2.5.16 allows message disclosure and modification because of an RNG error. A random number generator is used in Akka Remoting for TLS (both classic and Artery Remoting). Akka allows configuration of custom random number generators. For historical reasons, Akka included the AES128CounterSecureRNG and AES256CounterSecureRNG random number generators. The implementations had a bug that caused the generated numbers to be repeated after only a few bytes. The custom RNG implementations were not configured by default but examples in the documentation showed (and therefore implicitly recommended) using the custom ones. This can be used by an attacker to compromise the communication if these random number generators are enabled in configuration. It would be possible to eavesdrop, replay, or modify the messages sent with Akka Remoting/Cluster.

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Maven com.typesafe.akka:akka-actor_2.11 >= 2.5.0, < 2.5.16 2.5.16 GHSA-mr95-9rr4-668f
Maven com.typesafe.akka:akka-actor_2.12 >= 2.5.0, < 2.5.16 2.5.16 GHSA-mr95-9rr4-668f

References