pyca/cryptography · Security

Cipher.update_into can corrupt memory if passed an immutable python object as the outbuf

GHSA ID
GHSA-w7pp-m8wf-vj6r
CVE ID
CVE-2023-23931
Severity
medium
Published
Updated
CVSS
6.5 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L
CVSS v3
6.5 · CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L
CVSS v4
6.9 · CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Description

Previously, Cipher.update_into would accept Python objects which implement the buffer protocol, but provide only immutable buffers:

>>> outbuf = b"\x00" * 32
>>> c = ciphers.Cipher(AES(b"\x00" * 32), modes.ECB()).encryptor()
>>> c.update_into(b"\x00" * 16, outbuf)
16
>>> outbuf
b'\xdc\x95\xc0x\xa2@\x89\x89\xadH\xa2\x14\x92\x84 \x87\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00'

This would allow immutable objects (such as bytes) to be mutated, thus violating fundamental rules of Python. This is a soundness bug -- it allows programmers to misuse an API, it cannot be exploited by attacker controlled data alone.

This now correctly raises an exception.

This issue has been present since update_into was originally introduced in cryptography 1.8.

CWEs

References