OpenSSL VS libsodium

Today, April 7th, 2024, marks the 10-year anniversary since CVE-2014-0160 was published. This security vulnerability known as "Heartbleed" was a flaw in the OpenSSL cryptography software, the most popular option to implement Transport Layer Security (TLS). In more layman's terms, if you type https:// in your browser address bar, chances are high that you are interacting with OpenSSL.

At this point I pretty much understand the entire process on how the xz backdoor came to be: its execution stages, extraction from binary "test" files etc. But one thing puzzles me: how can the ifunc mechanism be used to replace something like RSA_public_decrypt? Granted this probably stems from my lack of understanding of ifunc, but I was under the impression that in order for the ifunc mechanism to work in your code, you have to explicitly mark specific function with multiple implementations with __attribute__ ((ifunc ("the_resolver_function"))). Looking at the source code of the RSA function in question, ifunc attribute isn't present:

https://github.com/openssl/openssl/blob/master/crypto/rsa/rsa_crpt.c#L51

So how does the backdoor actually replace the call? Does this means that the ifunc mechanism can be used to override pretty much anything on the system?

OpenSSL and Go crypt/tls has no support yet, so none of the webservers that depend on them support it. Apache, Nginx, and Caddy, they all need upstream ECH support first.

- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/7482

- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/pull/22938

- https://github.com/golang/go/issues/63369

If I'm understanding the draft correctly, I think the webserver you're hosting your sites on would need it implemented as it requires private keys and ECH configuration. In the example of nginx since it uses openssl, openssl would need to implement it. I found an issue on their Github but it's still open: https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/7482

I confirmed that the systm was on 1.1.1f with openssl version command. Hmm...... I check the openssl version in the repo with apt list... LOL package names wernt helpful. finally went to the repo pages and found that its still on 1.1.1f, https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssl. Meenwhile I looked up the version history on https://www.openssl.org/ and saw that 1.1.1v was released at the beginning of this month... ok. I can understand it it was out less then 30 days. I looked up when f came out, end of MARCH 2020. NEARLY 3-1/2 YEARS

Libsodium has been around for a while, so probably the reason it was posted is that version 1.0.19 was just released: https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium/releases/tag/1.0.19-RE...

Updated NuGet and Swift packages are going to be uploaded soon.

AEGIS-128X and 256X are not there yet, but if you need them, they are available in libaegis: https://github.com/jedisct1/libaegis

All the code from libaegis will eventually be merged into libsodium, including the incremental update API which is especially useful for TLS.

To version the dependency you can check the current stable tree in git and save the date and git hash.

To address both of these vulnerabilities, you should instead use a library that handles these sharp edges for you. A well received library in the security and cryptography communities is libsodium. It has high level functions that handle password hashing and data encryption for you, reducing the risk that you introduce vulnerabilities in your code, such as you have here.

In general, cryptography is really hard. So for example, an attacker could construct a message that if you signed would leak information, ie it reduces the space of possible keys such that it can be brute forced. I’m not entirely sure if you could do that with a transfer function. But it’s certainly possible. That said, there are a ton of smart devs trying to prevent that as well so I’m not assuming anything here. But prudent practices are likely good to follow. Be very careful calling anything from your cold wallet etc. Use disposable keys for anything a bit risky. I took a sec to google an example and this is the closest I could find. https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium/issues/170

Hi everyone! I'm learning Rust while on a break between jobs, and as I'm particularly interested in interfacing Rust with C and in cryptography, I've decided to write a wrapper around libsodium (https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium) in Rust. This is purely a hobby project and I probably won't ever release it as there are already some open-source Rust bindings available for the library.

Can anyone recommend between Librandombytes and libsodium ramdombytes?

https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium/tree/master/src/libsod...