GitHub Advisoryadvisory · npm
GHSA-5vhg-9xg4-cv9m tiny-secp256k1 allows for verify() bypass when running in bundled environment
HIGH
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2024-49365
- Ecosystem
- npm
- Packages
- tiny-secp256k1
- Severity
- High
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P
- Weaknesses
- CWE-347
- Reviewed
- 2025-06-30
Affected packages
• npm tiny-secp256k1: < 1.1.7 → fixed in 1.1.7
Description
Summary
A malicious JSON-stringifyable message can be made passing on `verify()`, when global Buffer is `buffer` package
Details
This affects only environments where `require('buffer')` is
E.g.: browser bundles, React Native apps, etc.
`Buffer.isBuffer` check can be bypassed, resulting in strange objects being accepted as `message`, and those messages could trick `verify()` into returning false-positive `true` values
v2.x is unaffected as it verifies input to be an actual `Uint8Array` instance
Such a message can be constructed for any already known message/signature pair
There are some restrictions though (also depending on the known message/signature), but not very limiting, see PoC for example
https://github.com/bitcoinjs/tiny-secp256k1/pull/140 is a subtle fix for this
PoC
This code deliberately doesn't provide `reencode` for now, could be updated later
```js
import { randomBytes } from 'crypto'
import tiny from 'tiny-secp256k1' // 1.1.6
// Random keypair
const privateKey = randomBytes(32)
const publicKey = tiny.pointFromScalar(privateKey)
const valid = Buffer.alloc(32).fill(255) // let's sign a static buffer
const signature = tiny.sign(valid, privateKey)
// Prevent processing any unverified data by fail-closed throwing
function verified(data, signature) {
if (!Buffer.isBuffer(data)) data = Buffer.from(data, 'hex')
if (!tiny.verify(data, publicKey, signature)) throw new Error('Signature invalid!')
return new Uint8Array(data)
}
function safeProcess(payload) {
const totally = JSON.parse(payload) // e.g. json over network
const message = verified(totally, signature)
console.log(message instanceof Uint8Array)
console.log(Buffer.from(message).toString('utf8'))
}
const payload = reencode(valid, "Secure contain protect")
safeProcess(payload)
```
Output (after being bundled):
```console
true
Secure contain protect����
```
Impact
Malicious messages could crafted to be verified from a given known valid message/signature pair
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2024-49365 tiny-secp256k1 is a tiny secp256k1 native/JS wrapper. vulnerability
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-347 Improper Verification of Cryptographic Signature weakness