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OpenAdvisories
High · 8.7 CVE-2026-13505 EUVD-2026-54726GHSA-98j2-6v39-78w8

Zeroisation of sensitive key material on garbage collection relies on finalization

Published Aug 8, 2026 · Updated Aug 10, 2026 · Assigned by bcorg

Description

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.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
Legion of the Bouncy Castle BC-FJA 1.0.0 – < 1.0.2.7, 2.0.0 – < 2.0.2, 2.1.0 – < 2.1.3 1.0.2.7

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.10 bouncycastle No fix yet —
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —
Show 5 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 22.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS bouncycastle No fix yet —

Wolfi

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Wolfi rolling opensearch-2 2.19.6-r11 —

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Maven org.bouncycastle:bc-fips < 1.0.2.7 1.0.2.7 GHSA-98j2-6v39-78w8
Maven org.bouncycastle:bc-fips >= 2.0.0, < 2.0.2 2.0.2 GHSA-98j2-6v39-78w8
Maven org.bouncycastle:bc-fips >= 2.1.0, < 2.1.3 2.1.3 GHSA-98j2-6v39-78w8

Advisories 1

References