Bug 1020272 (CVE-2013-4443) - CVE-2013-4443 pwgen: Secure mode has bias towards numbers and uppercase letters
Summary: CVE-2013-4443 pwgen: Secure mode has bias towards numbers and uppercase letters
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: CVE-2013-4443
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Red Hat Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On: 1020273 1020274
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2013-10-17 11:11 UTC by Ratul Gupta
Modified: 2019-09-29 13:09 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2013-10-23 05:14:23 UTC
Embargoed:

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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
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