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Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:35:52 +0100
From: Daniel Godás <dgodas@...il.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: CVE request: crypt_blowfish 8-bit character mishandling
This is the most sensible email I've seen on this list in ages. Keep up the
good work!
2011/6/20 Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
> Hi,
>
> Earlier today, while working on a test suite for John the Ripper, magnum
> discovered and reported what turned out to be a bug in John the Ripper
> and crypt_blowfish:
>
> http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2011/06/19/2
>
> The bug is inadvertent sign extension, and the fix is trivial:
>
> http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2011/06/19/3
>
> This bug dates back to 1998 (or maybe even 1997).
>
> Unfortunately, the bug is not only in JtR, but also in crypt_blowfish,
> and thus in plenty of other systems and programs that have integrated
> crypt_blowfish. Obviously, I am quite embarrassed; I should have
> included 8-bit test vectors or subjected crypt_blowfish to a fuzzer (vs.
> OpenBSD's implementation), or/and used different coding conventions (use
> "unsigned char" almost everywhere, although this has its problems too -
> such as compiler warnings on library calls that expect simple "char *").
>
> Since the code successfully worked in JtR, I thought that it was
> essentially already fuzz-tested. But apparently passwords with 8-bit
> characters were uncommon enough that no one noticed the bug for years.
>
> I am going to provide an official fix for crypt_blowfish (likely the
> one-liner plus added tests). I thought I'd bring the issue up on
> oss-security sooner rather than later.
>
> Here's my preliminary analysis of the impact:
>
> http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2011/06/20/3
> http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2011/06/20/5
>
> To summarize:
>
> The majority of hashes (but not all of them) for passwords containing
> characters with the 8th bit set are incompatible with OpenBSD's (really
> nasty, but no security impact here).
>
> What's worse, approximately 3 in 16 passwords containing a single
> character with the 8th bit set have 1 to 3 characters immediately
> preceding the 8-bit character ignored. With more than one character
> with the 8th bit set, things may be even worse.
>
> Thus, those passwords may be much easier to crack than expected.
>
> As to what's affected besides crypt_blowfish itself, I expect it to be
> PHP (the code in php-5.3.7RC1 looks affected), Linux distros that use
> crypt_blowfish (Owl, ALT Linux, SUSE), and some others (I'll try to
> identify them and notify the maintainers).
>
> Sorry about that!
>
> Since this is the second bug with char signedness in crypt_blowfish, it
> looks like I have a lesson to learn here. The last time, the bug was
> with salt generation for hash types other than bcrypt (that code was
> little used and little tested). Besides fixing the bug, I responded by
> running extensive tests and making sure the distribution of salts was
> uniform. Of course, it was better to run those tests before releasing
> the code to the public. Now we have an issue with the passwords
> themselves. Obviously, I will be adding more tests, even though it
> would be better done before releasing the code.
>
> No, I don't expect even more sign extension bugs in crypt_blowfish.
> There's not that much code, and we've pretty much tested it by now.
>
> However, I might reconsider my C programming conventions for new code as
> it relates to use of integer types. I think I'd rather workaround
> meaningless compiler warnings on strlen() and the like (even though
> those extra casts look dirty) than miss real bugs elsewhere.
>
> Perl's Crypt::Eksblowfish turns out to have sufficiently reworked code
> that it's unaffected:
>
> http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2011/06/20/4
>
> Oh, also some builds of crypt_blowfish (and of affected systems/apps)
> for PowerPC are probably unaffected, because char is typically unsigned
> there (unless overridden in compiler flags for compatibility with more
> typical systems).
>
> Once again, my apologies for the mess.
>
> Alexander
>
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