CVE-2026-8798
CVE-2026-8798 is a CWE-835 vulnerability. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2026-8798 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
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…
Description
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.
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for the affected component. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Remediation status
No patched version of the affected component has shipped for CVE-2026-8798 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 pinpoints whether CVE-2026-8798 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2026-8798. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-8798 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2026-8798 across dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.