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Miscomputation when performing AES encryption in rust-crypto

Critical severity GitHub Reviewed Published Jun 17, 2022 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Jan 12, 2023

Package

cargo rust-crypto (Rust)

Affected versions

<= 0.2.36

Patched versions

None

Description

The following Rust program demonstrates some strangeness in AES encryption - if you have an immutable key slice and then operate on that slice, you get different encryption output than if you operate on a copy of that key.

For these functions, we expect that extending a 16 byte key to a 32 byte key by repeating it gives the same encrypted data, because the underlying rust-crypto functions repeat key data up to the necessary key size for the cipher.

use crypto::{
    aes, blockmodes, buffer,
    buffer::{BufferResult, ReadBuffer, WriteBuffer},
    symmetriccipher,
};

fn encrypt(
    key: &[u8],
    iv: &[u8],
    data: &str,
) -> Result<String, symmetriccipher::SymmetricCipherError> {
    let mut encryptor =
        aes::cbc_encryptor(aes::KeySize::KeySize256, key, iv, blockmodes::PkcsPadding);

    let mut encrypted_data = Vec::<u8>::new();
    let mut read_buffer = buffer::RefReadBuffer::new(data.as_bytes());
    let mut buffer = [0; 4096];
    let mut write_buffer = buffer::RefWriteBuffer::new(&mut buffer);

    loop {
        let result = encryptor.encrypt(&mut read_buffer, &mut write_buffer, true)?;

        encrypted_data.extend(
            write_buffer
                .take_read_buffer()
                .take_remaining()
                .iter()
                .copied(),
        );

        match result {
            BufferResult::BufferUnderflow => break,
            BufferResult::BufferOverflow => {}
        }
    }

    Ok(hex::encode(encrypted_data))
}

fn working() {
    let data = "data";
    let iv = [
        0xF0, 0xF1, 0xF2, 0xF3, 0xF4, 0xF5, 0xF6, 0xF7, 0xF8, 0xF9, 0xFA, 0xFB, 0xFC, 0xFD, 0xFE,
        0xFF,
    ];
    let key = [
        0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, 0x07, 0x08, 0x09, 0x0A, 0x0B, 0x0C, 0x0D, 0x0E,
        0x0F,
    ];
    // The copy here makes the code work.
    let key_copy = key;
    let key2: Vec<u8> = key_copy.iter().cycle().take(32).copied().collect();
    println!("key1:{} key2: {}", hex::encode(&key), hex::encode(&key2));

    let x1 = encrypt(&key, &iv, data).unwrap();
    println!("X1: {}", x1);

    let x2 = encrypt(&key2, &iv, data).unwrap();
    println!("X2: {}", x2);

    assert_eq!(x1, x2);
}

fn broken() {
    let data = "data";
    let iv = [
        0xF0, 0xF1, 0xF2, 0xF3, 0xF4, 0xF5, 0xF6, 0xF7, 0xF8, 0xF9, 0xFA, 0xFB, 0xFC, 0xFD, 0xFE,
        0xFF,
    ];
    let key = [
        0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, 0x07, 0x08, 0x09, 0x0A, 0x0B, 0x0C, 0x0D, 0x0E,
        0x0F,
    ];
    // This operation shouldn't affect the contents of key at all.
    let key2: Vec<u8> = key.iter().cycle().take(32).copied().collect();
    println!("key1:{} key2: {}", hex::encode(&key), hex::encode(&key2));

    let x1 = encrypt(&key, &iv, data).unwrap();
    println!("X1: {}", x1);

    let x2 = encrypt(&key2, &iv, data).unwrap();
    println!("X2: {}", x2);

    assert_eq!(x1, x2);
}

fn main() {
    working();
    broken();
}

The output from this program:

     Running `target/host/debug/rust-crypto-test`
key1:000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f key2: 000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f
X1: 90462bbe32965c8e7ea0addbbed4cddb
X2: 90462bbe32965c8e7ea0addbbed4cddb
key1:000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f key2: 000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f
X1: 26e847e5e7df1947bf82a650548a7d5b
X2: 90462bbe32965c8e7ea0addbbed4cddb
thread 'main' panicked at 'assertion failed: `(left == right)`
  left: `"26e847e5e7df1947bf82a650548a7d5b"`,
 right: `"90462bbe32965c8e7ea0addbbed4cddb"`', src/main.rs:83:5

Notably, the X1 key in the broken() test changes every time after rerunning the program.

References

Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Jun 17, 2022
Reviewed Jun 17, 2022
Last updated Jan 12, 2023

Severity

Critical

Weaknesses

No CWEs

CVE ID

No known CVE

GHSA ID

GHSA-jp3w-3q88-34cf

Source code

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