CVE-2026-9323

Insecure PRNG and Information Exposure in urwid Web Display Backend

HIGH
8.1
CVSS Score
Published: July 18, 2026 at 01:51 PM UTC
Updated: September 15, 2026 at 08:35 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorUrwid

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Severity
HIGH8.1
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.7%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

The urwid web display backend (urwid/display/web.py) generates web session identifiers (urwid_id) in Screen.start() by concatenating two random.randrange(10**9) calls that use Python's Mersenne Twister PRNG, which is not cryptographically secure. Each call consumes approximately 30 bits of PRNG state, and the Mersenne Twister internal state is approximately 19,937 bits, so an attacker who observes approximately 334 session IDs (for example via the X-Urwid-ID HTTP response header) can fully reconstruct the internal state and predict all past and future session IDs (Path B). The same identifier is also used as the filename of a FIFO created in the world-listable /tmp directory (for example /tmp/urwid375487765176907690.in), so any local user on the host can list /tmp to enumerate active session tokens directly (Path A). With a valid session ID, an attacker can read the victim's terminal screen via the polling endpoint, inject keystrokes into the victim's session (yielding OS-level code execution with the session owner's privileges if the session runs a shell), and inject exit sequences or flood the FIFO to terminate or crash the session. A prior Bandit S311 warning on this usage was suppressed with # noqa: S311 rather than fixed

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v ≤ 24acd12

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatableTotal impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

8.1HIGHVulnCheck
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Complexity
HIGH
Privileges
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
HIGH
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusDEFERRED
CWE
CWE-338

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