Predictive Vulnerability Intelligence.

Product

  • Product
  • Pricing
  • Documentation

Company

  • About
  • Partnerships
  • Blog
  • Support

Legal

  • Terms
  • Privacy
  • Data Licensing

© 2026 FAUCET Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.

CVE-2016-1494

23
FAUCET Score

CVE-2016-1494 describes a signature forgery vulnerability in the Python-RSA library (versions prior to 3.3), affecting products like fedoraproject and opensuse. This medium-severity flaw (CVSS 5.3) allows attackers to spoof RSA signatures using a small public exponent and crafted padding, known as a BERserk attack, leading to a potential loss of integrity. While no active exploitation, Metasploit, or ExploitDB modules exist, the vulnerability has seen minimal community discussion with one Reddit mention.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
< 3.3CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:python:rsa:*:*:*:*:*:python:*:*
22CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:22:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
23CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:fedoraproject:fedora:23:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
42.1CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:opensuse:leap:42.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
13.1CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:opensuse:opensuse:13.1:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.0

5.3MEDIUM

CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
NONE
Integrity Impact
LOW
Availability Impact
NONE
Exploitability Score
3.9
Impact Score
1.4
CvssVersion
3.0

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
7.00%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
93.5%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-24
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0700 is in the 91st percentile among its peer group of 23,690 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.1 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.4 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (1)

pippatch availablevia ghsa
Product: rsaFixed in: 3.3

Vendor Advisories (2)

pipGHSA-8rjr-6qq5-pj9pmedium

Python RSA allows attackers to spoof signatures

May 14, 2022
microsoft2016-Jan/CVE-2016-1494

The verify function in the RSA package for Python (Python-RSA) before 3.3 allows attackers to spoof signatures with a small public exponent via crafted signature padding, aka a BERserk attack.

Jan 12, 2016

References

lists.fedoraproject.org / pipermail/package-announce/2016-January/175897.html
Third Party Advisory
lists.fedoraproject.org / pipermail/package-announce/2016-January/175942.html
Third Party Advisory
lists.opensuse.org / opensuse-updates/2016-01/msg00032.html
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
bitbucket.org / sybren/python-rsa/pull-requests/14/security-fix-bb06-attack-in-verify-by/diff
PatchThird Party Advisory
blog.filippo.io / bleichenbacher-06-signature-forgery-in-python-rsa
ExploitThird Party Advisory
openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2016/01/05/1
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2016/01/05/3
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
securityfocus.com / bid/79829
Third Party AdvisoryVDB Entry