Bug 1020272 (CVE-2013-4443)

Summary:	CVE-2013-4443 pwgen: Secure mode has bias towards numbers and uppercase letters
Product:	[Other] Security Response	Reporter:	Ratul Gupta <ratulg>
Component:	vulnerability	Assignee:	Red Hat Product Security <security-response-team>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified	CC:	jbowes
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Security
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2013-10-23 05:14:23 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:	1020273, 1020274
Bug Blocks:

Description Ratul Gupta 2013-10-17 11:11:34 UTC

It was found that pwgen had a heavy bias towards using numbers and uppercase letters when generating random passwords.  Because of this, pwgen created passwords that were weaker and easier to guess than it should have. 

There seems to be a patch here saying it fixes most of the issues:
http://marc.info/?l=oss-security&m=137049241132104&w=4

References:
http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2013/q4/116
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/01/17/12
http://marc.info/?l=oss-security&m=137049241132104&w=4

Comment 1 Ratul Gupta 2013-10-17 11:12:39 UTC

Created pwgen tracking bugs for this issue:

Affects: fedora-all [bug 1020273]
Affects: epel-all [bug 1020274]

Comment 2 Ratul Gupta 2013-10-23 05:14:23 UTC

It was found that if you generated 1 extremely long password (rather than a ton of passwords) and made a histogram, there would be no bias, hence this CVE is **REJECTED**.

Reference:
http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2013/q4/162