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Fencer Intel
medium 6.5

CVE-2025-40919 json

Authen::DigestMD5 versions 0.01 through 0.04 for Perl generate the cnonce insecurely

published last yr. modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2025-21702

cvss
6.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.3%
EPSS 0.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 23%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Authen::DigestMD5 versions 0.01 through 0.02 for Perl generate the cnonce insecurely.

The cnonce (client nonce) is generated from an MD5 hash of the PID, the epoch time and the built-in rand function. The PID will come from a small set of numbers, and the epoch time may be guessed, if it is not leaked from the HTTP Date header. The built-in rand function is unsuitable for cryptographic usage.

According to RFC 2831, "The cnonce-value is an opaque quoted string value provided by the client and used by both client and server to avoid chosen plaintext attacks, and to provide mutual authentication. The security of the implementation depends on a good choice. It is RECOMMENDED that it contain at least 64 bits of entropy."

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2025-40919 updated cvss 5.9

authen-digestmd5: Authen::DigestMD5 insecure cnonce generation

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
last yr.

Exploit prediction

0.30% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 23% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
CNA 3.1 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N

Affected products

  • SALVA Authen::DigestMD5

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-340 Generation of Predictable Numbers or Identifiers
  • CWE-338 Use of Cryptographically Weak Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG)

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.