Re:EFail – Vulnerabilities in end-to-end encryption technolo...
by Dylan16807 on Monday May 14, 2018 @08:43AM
(#17064920)
The use of CBC without proper authentication sounds like a flaw in the standard to me. Especially the line in the FAQ about being able to create a fresh valid signature for an altered ciphertext is not good.
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Re:EFail – Vulnerabilities in end-to-end encryption technolo...
by slrz on Monday May 14, 2018 @05:09PM
(#17069484)
The "create a fresh valid signature" part talks about creating a new signature with the attacker's identity. Sure, technically it's a valid signature but it won't fool anyone regarding the message's authenticity. This is trivially possible for all schemes where you can detach the signature from the message.
Re:EFail – Vulnerabilities in end-to-end encryption technolo...
by Dylan16807 on Monday May 14, 2018 @06:25PM
(#17069990)
You should not be able to detach the signature when you're using an encryption mode with known-plaintext attacks. If you're not going to make decryption depend on having the original signature, at least use an encryption mode where any changes scramble the rest of the plaintext. Unauthenticated CBC is not acceptable.
Re:EFail – Vulnerabilities in end-to-end encryption technolo...
by John_KZ on Tuesday May 15, 2018 @10:35PM
(#17079594)
>talks about creating a new signature with the attacker's identity
Wait, if the signature isn't created with the same key as the message encryption, how does this even work? Shouldn't the client fail to either decrypt the message or validate the signature?