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High · 8.7 CVE-2026-8798 EUVD-2026-54725GHSA-v6w3-qrh8-qccc

Native entropy source retries the CPU entropy instructions without limit

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

Description

In Bouncy Castle for Java FIPS (BC-FJA) before bc-fips 2.1.3, the native entropy source used on Intel platforms retried the CPU entropy instructions without any bound. RDSEED and RDRAND report failure through their carry flag, and the JNI seeding routine spun re-issuing the instruction for as long as that flag stayed clear, so a persistent failure of the on-chip entropy source - whether from a hardware fault, from the underlying DRBG being exhausted by contention across many cores, or from a hypervisor that does not provide the instruction - left the calling thread looping indefinitely inside the JNI call, where it could be neither interrupted nor timed out. Any operation drawing from the native entropy source could therefore hang, denying service to the application. The retry loops are now bounded (200 attempts for RDSEED and 20 for RDRAND, twice the baselines given in Intel's Digital Random Number Generator software implementation guide), pausing between attempts and, on exhaustion, clearing any partially written buffer and throwing rather than continuing to spin. The clear is performed by an un-elidable memzero, which uses a volatile pointer and an assembly memory barrier so that a compiler cannot optimise the erase away as a dead store. Bouncy Castle for Java (bcprov) is not affected, as it has no native entropy source; the 1.0.X and 2.0.X FIPS series are not affected.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
Legion of the Bouncy Castle BC-FJA 2.1.0 – < 2.1.3 2.1.3

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 >= 2.1.0, < 2.1.3 2.1.3 GHSA-v6w3-qrh8-qccc

Advisories 1

References