CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-8631 — Canonical Cloud-Init security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.5

cloud-init through 19.4 relies on Mersenne Twister for a random password, which makes it easier for attackers to predict passwords, because rand_str in cloudinit/util.py calls the random.choice function.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.5 (3.1)
Published
2020-02-05
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-330

Affected products

  • canonical / cloud-init
  • opensuse / leap / 15.1
  • debian / debian_linux / 8.0

Matched remediation archetype

Cryptography, certificate, signature, and channel validation

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

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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