CVE-2026-81689: Jahlives OpenSSL Encrypt

High severity, CVSS 7.5. EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

openssl_encrypt versions before 1.4.9 derive the remote-pepper wrap key using unsalted HKDF-SHA256 or bare SHA-256 of the password, allowing identical keys across all users and files. Attackers with access to wrapped pepper blobs can precompute a single dictionary table and perform fleet-wide offline password guessing at hardware speed to recover user passwords.

Affected products

• Jahlives OpenSSL Encrypt: before 1.4.9 (fixed in 1.4.9)

Published 2026-08-27. Last modified 2026-09-03.