Skip to content
This repository has been archived by the owner on Jan 9, 2018. It is now read-only.

Unauthenticated encryption is vulnerable to chosen ciphertext attacks, bitflipping attacks #12

Open
tarcieri opened this issue Jan 19, 2017 · 6 comments

Comments

@tarcieri
Copy link

This gem is using an unauthenticated encryption mode (CBC) which is vulnerable to chosen ciphertext attacks (i.e. it is not IND-CCA secure)

This is a serious issue which can allow active attackers to completely recover message plaintexts. It also allows attackers to make undetectable alterations to the plaintext.

At the very minimum you should add HMAC in an encrypt-then-MAC construction.

@fsck-mount
Copy link

Is that something, that we can avoid using Random IV?

@tarcieri
Copy link
Author

No, failure to use a random IV (#4) is a separate, unrelated, but still very bad problem.

@fsck-mount
Copy link

@tarcieri Thanks for the info.

@jfinkhaeuser
Copy link

FYI, in case you're trying to follow the same path as me:

@jfinkhaeuser
Copy link

I'm just sad it took me four years to figure out that this path works just fine... ugh. It should not have surprised me.

@attritionorg
Copy link

@jfinkhaeuser That web form is a new thing created this year, in response to MITRE failing to issue IDs in a timely fashion via e-mail.

Sign up for free to subscribe to this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in.
Labels
None yet
Projects
None yet
Development

No branches or pull requests

4 participants