CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2019-1549 — OpenSSL 1.1.1 introduced a rewritten random number generator (RNG)

Medium CVSS 5.3

OpenSSL 1.1.1 introduced a rewritten random number generator (RNG). This was intended to include protection in the event of a fork() system call in order to ensure that the parent and child processes did not share the same RNG state. However this protection was not being used in the default case. A partial mitigation for this issue is that the output from a high precision timer is mixed into the RNG state so the likelihood of a parent and child process sharing state is significantly reduced. If an application already calls OPENSSL_init_crypto() explicitly using OPENSSL_INIT_ATFORK then this problem does not occur at all. Fixed in OpenSSL 1.1.1d (Affected 1.1.1-1.1.1c).

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.3 (3.1)
Published
2019-09-10
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-330

Affected products

  • openssl / openssl

Matched remediation archetype

Cryptography, certificate, signature, and channel validation

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Check exposure

  • Inventory affected algorithms, key uses, trust stores, certificate validation settings, random sources, and plaintext channels across clients and services.
  • Determine which secrets, identities, signatures, or data protections depend on the affected primitive or validation path.
  • Check debug, compatibility, fallback, and hostname or audience override settings in build and runtime configuration.

Remediate safely

  • Use a maintained platform cryptographic API with approved algorithms, modes, parameters, randomness, and full peer identity validation.
  • Remove insecure fallback and validation bypasses; separate keys by purpose and load them from managed secret storage.
  • Plan rotation or reissuance for affected keys, certificates, tokens, hashes, or ciphertext and document compatibility sequencing.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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