OpenSSL FIPS selftest failure when importing cv2 on FIPS-enabled systems

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#1,191 opened on Jan 23, 2026 18 comments 14 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@asmorkalov is already working on this.

Since Jan 26, 2026.

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This issue has not been assessed yet.

Description

bug

System Information

OS: RHEL 9.7 with FIPS enabled
Python 3.13.7
opencv-python==4.13.0.90

Detailed description

Importing cv2 crashes with FATAL FIPS SELFTEST FAILURE on systems with FIPS mode enabled.

The crash occurs when loading the native cv2 binary extension in cv2/__init__.py:

py_module = sys.modules.pop("cv2")
native_module = importlib.import_module("cv2")  # <-- crashes here

The cv2 binary appears to be linked against the OpenSSL in a way that fails FIPS validation on FIPS-enabled systems.

Reverting to the previous release currently provides a workaround.

[vmiller@gluskap tmp]$ uv venv
Using CPython 3.13.7
Creating virtual environment at: .venv
Activate with: source .venv/bin/activate
[vmiller@gluskap tmp]$ venv
(tmp) [vmiller@gluskap tmp]$ uv pip install "opencv-python<4.13.0.90"
Resolved 2 packages in 135ms
Prepared 2 packages in 10.33s
Installed 2 packages in 20ms
 + numpy==2.2.6
 + opencv-python==4.12.0.88
(tmp) [vmiller@gluskap tmp]$ python -c "import cv2; print('success');"
success

Steps to reproduce

On a machine installed with fips=1:

[vmiller@gluskap tmp]$ uv venv
Using CPython 3.13.7
Creating virtual environment at: .venv
Activate with: source .venv/bin/activate
[vmiller@gluskap tmp]$  venv
(tmp) [vmiller@gluskap tmp]$ uv pip install opencv-python
Resolved 2 packages in 402ms
Prepared 2 packages in 1.83s
Installed 2 packages in 19ms
 + numpy==2.4.1
 + opencv-python==4.13.0.90
(tmp) [vmiller@gluskap tmp]$ python -c "import cv2"
crypto/fips/fips.c:154: OpenSSL internal error: FATAL FIPS SELFTEST FAILURE
Aborted

Issue submission checklist

I report the issue, it's not a question
I checked the problem with documentation, FAQ, open issues, forum.opencv.org, Stack Overflow, etc and have not found any solution
I updated to the latest OpenCV version and the issue is still there
There is reproducer code and related data files (videos, images, onnx, etc)

Dominant language: Python
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