GitHub Advisoryadvisory · npm

GHSA-5vhg-9xg4-cv9m tiny-secp256k1 allows for verify() bypass when running in bundled environment

HIGH Published 2025-06-30 Modified 2025-07-01 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

References