CVE-2026-9323
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
What this means for your business
- An attacker can use it remotely, over a network, without a login, and without anyone at your company clicking anything.
- FIRST's prediction model gives it a 0.4% chance of attack attempts being seen in the next 30 days, ranking above 36% of all known flaws.
What to do
- 1Ask your IT team or provider whether any of your systems use the affected product.
- 2If you do, follow the vendor's guidance. No patch reference has been published yet.
Not sure if your company is exposed?
Fastnexa’s certified penetration testers can check whether attackers could use this flaw, or others like it, against your websites, apps and network. The full test is free for our first 10 founding clients until 31 December 2026.
Scoring
- CVSS
- 8.1 (v3.1)
- Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H- CVSS v4
- 9.2
- Weakness
- CWE-338
- Assigned by
- disclosure@vulncheck.com
Dates
- Published
- 2026-07-18
- Last modified
- 2026-09-15
- Sources
- NVD
References
- https://github.com/urwid/urwid
- https://github.com/urwid/urwid/commit/24acd12f0d0598036d0d577f2ee63e4a27b4a3d9
- https://github.com/urwid/urwid/issues/1127
- https://github.com/urwid/urwid/pull/1128
- https://github.com/urwid/urwid/security/advisories/GHSA-rjwp-g85x-gmjv
- https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/insecure-prng-and-information-exposure-in-urwid-web-display-backend
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2026/09/msg00015.html