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Fencer Vulns
high 8.7

CVE-2026-13505 json

Zeroisation of sensitive key material on garbage collection relies on finalization

published 2026-08-08 3 mo ago modified 2026-10-23 16 d ago also GHSA-98j2-6v39-78w8 , EUVD-2026-54726

cvss
8.7
version 4.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 37%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.bouncycastle:bc-fips 1.0.2.7, 2.0.2, 2.1.3
  • Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. BC-FJA 1.0.2.7, 2.0.2, 2.1.3

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-13505 updated cvss 7.5

org.bouncycastle/bc-fips: Bouncy Castle for Java FIPS: Sensitive key material remains in memory due to delayed zeroisation

  • Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Expansion Pack bc-fips 1.0.2.7
    not affected: component not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.43% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 37% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 8.7 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/U:Amber
CNA 4.0 8.7 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:Amber

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.bouncycastle:bc-fips
<1.0.2.7
>=2.0.0, <2.0.2
>=2.1.0, <2.1.3
1.0.2.7
2.0.2
2.1.3

Affected products

  • Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc. BC-FJA

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-772 Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.