CVE-2013-7373
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedAndroid before 4.4 does not properly arrange for seeding of the OpenSSL PRNG, which makes it easier for attackers to defeat cryptographic protection mechanisms by leveraging use of the PRNG within multiple applications.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · moderate confidenceAndroid before version 4.4 did not properly seed the OpenSSL Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG), causing cryptographic operations across multiple applications to rely on predictable or weak entropy sources. This made encryption keys, session tokens, and other security-critical values susceptible to prediction or reconstruction by attackers.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data<= 4.3.1= 1.0= 1.1= 1.5= 1.6= 2.0= 2.0.1= 2.1= 2.2= 2.2.1= 2.2.2= 2.2.3CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Authentication
- None
- Confidentiality
- Partial
- Integrity
- Partial
- Availability
- Partial
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Check Android OS versionGo to Settings > About Phone (or About Device) > Android version. Alternatively, use 'adb shell getprop ro.build.version.release'Affected if The displayed Android version is 4.3.1 or lower, or any version 1.0 through 4.3.1 (i.e., versions before 4.4)
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Identify if OpenSSL cryptographic functions are in useReview application codebase or dependencies for calls to OpenSSL functions such as RAND_bytes, SSL_library_init, or uses of SSL/TLS that rely on the system OpenSSL libraryAffected if The application uses OpenSSL for cryptographic operations (key generation, certificate handling, TLS connections) on an affected Android version
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Check for application-level entropy supplementationAudit application code to determine if it supplements system entropy using SecRandomCopyBytes, java.security.SecureRandom with explicit seed input, or custom entropy sourcesAffected if The application does NOT implement additional entropy supplementation and relies solely on system-provided entropy on an affected Android version (4.3.1 or below)
A user is affected if their device runs Android version 4.3.1 or any version from 1.0 through 4.3.1, AND the device or any installed applications perform cryptographic operations using the system OpenSSL library without application-level entropy supplementation.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataUpgrade affected Android devices to version 4.4 (KitKat) or later, which contains the proper PRNG seeding implementation. For applications on older Android versions, implement application-level entropy supplementation or use alternative cryptographic libraries with known-good seeding.
- Consultation8.0 h
- Implementation16.0 h
- Testing8.0 h
- Review / QA4.0 h
An estimate, not a bill — we confirm scope with you before any work starts. Need it this week? Rush from $10,240.
Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2013-7373 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2013-7373 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.
- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data