GLSA-201612-01 : GnuPG: RNG output is predictable

medium Nessus Plugin ID 95516

Language:

Synopsis

The remote Gentoo host is missing one or more security-related patches.

Description

The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-201612-01 (GnuPG: RNG output is predictable)

A long standing bug (since 1998) in Libgcrypt (see “GLSA 201610-04”
below) and GnuPG allows an attacker to predict the output from the standard RNG. Please review the “Entropy Loss and Output Predictability in the Libgcrypt PRNG” paper below for a deep technical analysis.
Impact :

An attacker who obtains 580 bytes of the random number from the standard RNG can trivially predict the next 20 bytes of output.
This flaw does not affect the default generation of keys, because running gpg for key creation creates at most 2 keys from the pool. For a single 4096 bit RSA key, 512 bytes of random are required and thus for the second key (encryption subkey), 20 bytes could be predicted from the the first key.
However, the security of an OpenPGP key depends on the primary key (which was generated first) and thus the 20 predictable bytes should not be a problem. For the default key length of 2048 bit nothing will be predictable.
Workaround :

There is no known workaround at this time.

Solution

All GnuPG 1 users should upgrade to the latest version:
# emerge --sync # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose '>=app-crypt/gnupg-1.4.21'

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 95516

File Name: gentoo_GLSA-201612-01.nasl

Version: 3.6

Type: local

Family: Gentoo Local Security Checks

Published: 12/5/2016

Updated: 1/15/2026

Supported Sensors: Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 2.2

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5

Temporal Score: 3.7

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2016-6313

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.3

Temporal Score: 4.6

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:gentoo:linux, p-cpe:/a:gentoo:linux:gnupg

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/Gentoo/release, Host/Gentoo/qpkg-list

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 12/2/2016

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2016-6313

GLSA: 201612-01

Detections

Analytics