CVE-2026-81705
Received
Received - Intake
Password Leak in OpenSSL-Encrypt Debug Logs
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-81705, 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
openssl-encrypt before 1.4.9 fails to redact the file password in its --debug argv dump when the password is supplied via bundled short-option spellings (e.g. -apHunter2) or abbreviated long-option spellings (e.g. --passw). The sanitizer only recognized exact option names, --option=value forms, and tokens starting with -p, so these spellings bypass the redaction chokepoint and the cleartext password is written to stderr. Anyone with access to that output (terminal scrollback, merged 2>&1 output, CI job logs, or the GUI's persistent debug log) can recover the password.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
| Probability: | |
| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| openssl | openssl | to 1.4.9 (exc) |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-532 | The product writes sensitive information to a log file. |
