Zeroisation of sensitive key material on garbage collection relies on finalization
Summary
| CVE | CVE-2026-13505 |
|---|---|
| State | PUBLISHED |
| Assigner | bcorg |
| Source Priority | CVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback |
| Published | 2026-08-08 02:17:16 UTC |
| Updated | 2026-08-08 02:17:16 UTC |
| Description | 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. |
Risk And Classification
Primary CVSS: v4.0 8.7 HIGH from 91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630
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
Problem Types: CWE-772 | CWE-772 CWE-772 Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime
| Version | Source | Type | Score | Severity | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.0 | 91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630 | Secondary | 8.7 | HIGH | 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/C... |
| 4.0 | CNA | CVSS | 8.7 | HIGH | 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 |
CVSS v4.0 Breakdown
Attack Vector
NetworkAttack Complexity
LowAttack Requirements
NonePrivileges Required
NoneUser Interaction
NoneConfidentiality
NoneIntegrity
NoneAvailability
HighSub Conf.
NoneSub Integrity
NoneSub Availability
NoneCVSS: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
Vendor Declared Affected Products
| Source | Vendor | Product | Version | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CNA | Legion Of The Bouncy Castle Inc. | BC-FJA | affected 1.0.0 1.0.2.7 maven | all |
| CNA | Legion Of The Bouncy Castle Inc. | BC-FJA | affected 2.0.0 2.0.2 maven | all |
| CNA | Legion Of The Bouncy Castle Inc. | BC-FJA | affected 2.1.0 2.1.3 maven | all |
References
| Reference | Source | Link | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| github.com/bcgit/bc-java/wiki/CVE%E2%80%902026%E2%80%9013505 | 91579145-5d7b-4cc5-b925-a0262ff19630 | github.com | |
| CVE Program record | CVE.ORG | www.cve.org | canonical |
| NVD vulnerability detail | NVD | nvd.nist.gov | canonical, analysis |
No vendor comments have been submitted for this CVE.
There are currently no legacy QID mappings associated with this CVE.