CVE-2026-81684
Received
Received - Intake
OpenSSL-Encrypt Command Line Password Exposure via cmdline
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-81684, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-08-27
Last updated on: 2026-08-27
Assigner: VulnCheck
Description
Description
In openssl_encrypt (pip package openssl-encrypt) versions <= 1.4.8, the desktop GUI passes the steganography password to the CLI child process on the command line via the --stego-password argument (on both encrypt and decrypt paths) instead of via an environment variable as done for the main password. Any local user can read the steganography password from /proc/<pid>/cmdline for the lifetime of the subprocess. Fixed in 1.4.9.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
| Probability: | |
| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| openssl | openssl_encrypt | to 1.4.9 (exc) |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-214 | A process is invoked with sensitive command-line arguments, environment variables, or other elements that can be seen by other processes on the operating system. |
