Bug 2512722 (CVE-2026-13505)

Summary: CVE-2026-13505 org.bouncycastle/bc-fips: Bouncy Castle for Java FIPS: Sensitive key material remains in memory due to delayed zeroisation
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
Version: unspecifiedCC: anujha, asoldano, bbaranow, bmaxwell, bstansbe, dlofthou, istudens, ivassile, iweiss, mosmerov, msvehla, nwallace, pberan, pesilva, pjindal, pmackay, rstancel, thjenkin, vdosoudi
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in Bouncy Castle for Java FIPS (BC-FJA). Sensitive cryptographic key material, intended to be securely erased from memory (zeroised) upon garbage collection, may persist longer than expected. This occurs because the zeroisation process relies on a deprecated Java finalization mechanism, which can be delayed on Java 9 and later versions. Consequently, sensitive key material could remain resident in the system's memory, potentially leading to information disclosure.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-08 01:31:14 UTC 
In Bouncy Castle for Java FIPS (BC-FJA) before bc-fips 1.0.2.7 (1.0.X series), 2.0.2 (2.0.X series) and 2.1.3 (2.1.X series), sensitive key material held by the AES and DESede engines, the SP 800-90A DRBGs, SymmetricSecretKey and the PBKD and scrypt parameter classes was zeroised on garbage collection by overriding Object.finalize. Finalization runs at an unspecified time and in an unspecified order and is serviced by a single finalizer thread, so where objects carrying a finalizer are allocated faster than that thread retires them the pending-finalization queue grows without bound: disposal falls arbitrarily far behind, which can contribute to an OutOfMemoryError under load, and the key material those objects hold stays resident in the heap for as long as they are queued, defeating the purpose of the zeroisation. The behaviour was not a problem on Java 8 or Java 11; it is later JVMs, on which finalization has been deprecated and progressively de-emphasised, where it becomes one. Disposal of these classes now runs from a java.lang.ref.Cleaner registered in the multi-release jdk1.9 overlay, so on Java 9 and later it no longer depends on the finalizer being scheduled. Bouncy Castle for Java (bcprov) and Bouncy Castle for Java LTS are not affected, as neither implements the finalizer-based zeroisation scheme.