dalek-cryptography/ed25519-dalek · Security

`ed25519-dalek` Double Public Key Signing Function Oracle Attack

GHSA ID
GHSA-w5vr-6qhr-36cc
CVE ID
CVE-2022-50237
Severity
medium
Published
Updated
CVSS
5.9 · CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N
CVSS v3
5.9 · CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:N

Description

Versions of ed25519-dalek prior to v2.0 model private and public keys as separate types which can be assembled into a Keypair, and also provide APIs for serializing and deserializing 64-byte private/public keypairs.

Such APIs and serializations are inherently unsafe as the public key is one of the inputs used in the deterministic computation of the S part of the signature, but not in the R value. An adversary could somehow use the signing function as an oracle that allows arbitrary public keys as input can obtain two signatures for the same message sharing the same R and only differ on the S part.

Unfortunately, when this happens, one can easily extract the private key.

Revised public APIs in v2.0 of ed25519-dalek do NOT allow a decoupled private/public keypair as signing input, except as part of specially labeled "hazmat" APIs which are clearly labeled as being dangerous if misused.

CWEs

References