CVE-2024-9355 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.5) CWE-457 vulnerability in github.com/golang-fips/openssl. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Golang FIPS OpenSSL has a Use of Uninitialized Variable vulnerability
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2024-9355.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2024-9355 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/golang-fips/opensslReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
A vulnerability was found in Golang FIPS OpenSSL. This flaw allows a malicious user to randomly cause an uninitialized buffer length variable with a zeroed buffer to be returned in FIPS mode. It may also be possible to force a false positive match between non-equal hashes when comparing a trusted computed hmac sum to an untrusted input sum if an attacker can send a zeroed buffer in place of a pre-computed sum. It is also possible to force a derived key to be all zeros instead of an unpredictable value. This may have follow-on implications for the Go TLS stack.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/golang-fips/openssl | all versions | No fix |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/golang-fips/openssl, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Remediation status
No patched version of github.com/golang-fips/openssl has shipped for CVE-2024-9355 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2024-9355 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2024-9355. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
This issue is specific to the Go language and only affects the test code in cri-o and conmon, not the production code. Since both projects use Go exclusively for testing purposes, this issue does not impact their production environment. Therefore, cri-o and conmon are not affected by this vulnerability.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Lifecycle Support | rhc-worker-script-0:0.10-2.el7_9 | RHSA-2024:10133 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | go-toolset:rhel8-8100020241001112709.a3795dee | RHSA-2024:7502 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | grafana-0:9.2.10-20.el8_10 | RHSA-2024:8327 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | grafana-pcp-0:5.1.1-9.el8_10 | RHSA-2024:8847 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | osbuild-composer-0:101.5-2.el8_10 | RHSA-2026:66016 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 Telecommunications Update Service | osbuild-composer-0:75-10.el8_8 | RHSA-2026:68504 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | golang-0:1.21.13-4.el9_4 | RHSA-2024:7550 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | grafana-0:9.2.10-19.el9_4 | RHSA-2024:8678 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-9355 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2024-9355 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.