Bouncy Castle: the native entropy source used on Intel platforms retried the CPU entropy instructions without any bound
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 software
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| Platform | Package | Vulnerable versions | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Java / Kotlin (Maven) | org.bouncycastle:bc-fips | >= 2.1.0, < 2.1.3 | 2.1.3 |
References
- CVSS vector
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- Weakness (CWE)
CWE-835- Platform
- Java / Kotlin (Maven)
- Package
org.bouncycastle:bc-fips- Disclosed
- 08.08.2026
- Updated
- 11.10.2026 13:20
Sources and licenses
OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-v6w3-qrh8-qccc - CC BY 4.0
Vulnerability history: org.bouncycastle:bc-fips
All published vulnerabilities of this package (Java / Kotlin (Maven)), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.
- Total entries
- 13
- First → latest
- 04.2021 08.2026
- Without a fix
- 0
- Exploited in attacks
- 0
Severity breakdown
- Critical 1
- High 3
- Medium 7
- Low 2
Disclosures per year
- 2021: 2
- 2022: 1
- 2023: 0
- 2024: 1
- 2025: 5
- 2026: 4
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Bouncy Castle: the native entropy source used on Intel platforms retried the CPU entropy instructions without any bound this entry
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