GitHub Advisoryadvisory · crates.io
GHSA-x4gp-pqpj-f43q curve25519-dalek has timing variability in `curve25519-dalek`'s `Scalar29::sub`/`Scalar52::sub`
LOW
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2024-58262
- Ecosystem
- crates.io
- Packages
- curve25519-dalek
- Severity
- Low
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
- Weaknesses
- CWE-203
- Reviewed
- 2024-06-18
Affected packages
• crates.io curve25519-dalek: < 4.1.3 → fixed in 4.1.3
Description
Timing variability of any kind is problematic when working with potentially secret values such as elliptic curve scalars, and such issues can potentially leak private keys and other secrets. Such a problem was recently discovered in `curve25519-dalek`.
The `Scalar29::sub` (32-bit) and `Scalar52::sub` (64-bit) functions contained usage of a mask value inside a loop where LLVM saw an opportunity to insert a branch instruction (`jns` on x86) to conditionally bypass this code section when the mask value is set to zero as can be seen in godbolt:
• 32-bit (see L106): https://godbolt.org/z/zvaWxzvqv
• 64-bit (see L48): https://godbolt.org/z/PczYj7Pda
A similar problem was recently discovered in the Kyber reference implementation:
https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/pqc-forum/c/hqbtIGFKIpU/m/cnE3pbueBgAJ
As discussed on that thread, one portable solution, which is also used in this PR, is to introduce a volatile read as an optimization barrier, which prevents the compiler from optimizing it away.
The fix can be validated in godbolt here:
• 32-bit: https://godbolt.org/z/jc9j7eb8E
• 64-bit: https://godbolt.org/z/x8d46Yfah
The problem was discovered and the solution independently verified by Alexander Wagner and Lea Themint using their DATA tool:
https://github.com/Fraunhofer-AISEC/DATA
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2024-58262 The curve25519-dalek crate before 4.1.3 for Rust has a constant-time operation on elliptic curve scalars that is removed by LLVM. vulnerability
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-203 Observable Discrepancy weakness
References
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-58262 advisory
- https://github.com/dalek-cryptography/curve25519-dalek/pull/659 web
- https://github.com/dalek-cryptography/curve25519-dalek/commit/415892acf1cdf9161bd6a4c99bc2f4cb8fae5e6a web
- https://github.com/dalek-cryptography/curve25519-dalek package
- https://rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2024-0344.html web