What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2023-31124: AutoTools does not set CARES_RANDOM_FILE during cross compilation
- Severity: low (CVSS 3.7 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.9% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2023-05-25 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-330
Description
c-ares is an asynchronous resolver library. When cross-compiling c-ares and using the autotools build system, CARES_RANDOM_FILE will not be set, as seen when cross compiling aarch64 android. This will downgrade to using rand() as a fallback which could allow an attacker to take advantage of the lack of entropy by not using a CSPRNG. This issue was patched in version 1.19.1.
Affected products
- C-Ares Project C-Ares: before 1.19.1 — fixed in 1.19.1
- Fedoraproject Fedora: 37, 38
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: C-Ares Project C-Ares 1.19.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- https://github.com/c-ares/c-ares/releases/tag/cares-1_19_1
- https://github.com/c-ares/c-ares/security/advisories/GHSA-54xr-f67r-4pc4
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/B5Z5XFNXTNPTCBBVXFDNZQVLLIE6VRBY/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/UBFWILTA33LOSV23P44FGTQQIDRJHIY7/
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202310-09
- https://github.com/c-ares/c-ares/releases/tag/cares-1_19_1
- https://github.com/c-ares/c-ares/security/advisories/GHSA-54xr-f67r-4pc4
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/B5Z5XFNXTNPTCBBVXFDNZQVLLIE6VRBY/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/UBFWILTA33LOSV23P44FGTQQIDRJHIY7/
- https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202310-09
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