CVE-2021-4238: Insufficient randomness in github.com/Masterminds/goutils

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.1 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2022-12-27 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-331

Description

Randomly-generated alphanumeric strings contain significantly less entropy than expected. The RandomAlphaNumeric and CryptoRandomAlphaNumeric functions always return strings containing at least one digit from 0 to 9. This significantly reduces the amount of entropy in short strings generated by these functions.

Affected products

github.com/Masterminds/goutils: before 1.1.1 — fixed in 1.1.1
Go Github.Com/Masterminds/Goutils: before 1.1.1 — fixed in 1.1.1

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: github.com/Masterminds/goutils 1.1.1; Go Github.Com/Masterminds/Goutils 1.1.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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