RUSTSEC-2022-0011 on 2022-02-28: Miscomputation when performing AES encryption in rust-crypto

The following Rust program demonstrates some strangeness in AES encryption - if you have an immutable key slice and then operate on that slice, you get different encryption output than if you operate on a copy of that key.

For these functions, we expect that extending a 16 byte key to a 32 byte key by repeating it gives the same encrypted data, because the underlying rust-crypto functions repeat key data up to the necessary key size for the cipher.

use crypto::{
    aes, blockmodes, buffer,
    buffer::{BufferResult, ReadBuffer, WriteBuffer},
    symmetriccipher,
};

fn encrypt(
    key: &[u8],
    iv: &[u8],
    data: &str,
) -> Result<String, symmetriccipher::SymmetricCipherError> {
    let mut encryptor =
        aes::cbc_encryptor(aes::KeySize::KeySize256, key, iv, blockmodes::PkcsPadding);

    let mut encrypted_data = Vec::<u8>::new();
    let mut read_buffer = buffer::RefReadBuffer::new(data.as_bytes());
    let mut buffer = [0; 4096];
    let mut write_buffer = buffer::RefWriteBuffer::new(&mut buffer);

    loop {
        let result = encryptor.encrypt(&mut read_buffer, &mut write_buffer, true)?;

        encrypted_data.extend(
            write_buffer
                .take_read_buffer()
                .take_remaining()
                .iter()
                .copied(),
        );

        match result {
            BufferResult::BufferUnderflow => break,
            BufferResult::BufferOverflow => {}
        }
    }

    Ok(hex::encode(encrypted_data))
}

fn working() {
    let data = "data";
    let iv = [
        0xF0, 0xF1, 0xF2, 0xF3, 0xF4, 0xF5, 0xF6, 0xF7, 0xF8, 0xF9, 0xFA, 0xFB, 0xFC, 0xFD, 0xFE,
        0xFF,
    ];
    let key = [
        0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, 0x07, 0x08, 0x09, 0x0A, 0x0B, 0x0C, 0x0D, 0x0E,
        0x0F,
    ];
    // The copy here makes the code work.
    let key_copy = key;
    let key2: Vec<u8> = key_copy.iter().cycle().take(32).copied().collect();
    println!("key1:{} key2: {}", hex::encode(&key), hex::encode(&key2));

    let x1 = encrypt(&key, &iv, data).unwrap();
    println!("X1: {}", x1);

    let x2 = encrypt(&key2, &iv, data).unwrap();
    println!("X2: {}", x2);

    assert_eq!(x1, x2);
}

fn broken() {
    let data = "data";
    let iv = [
        0xF0, 0xF1, 0xF2, 0xF3, 0xF4, 0xF5, 0xF6, 0xF7, 0xF8, 0xF9, 0xFA, 0xFB, 0xFC, 0xFD, 0xFE,
        0xFF,
    ];
    let key = [
        0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, 0x07, 0x08, 0x09, 0x0A, 0x0B, 0x0C, 0x0D, 0x0E,
        0x0F,
    ];
    // This operation shouldn't affect the contents of key at all.
    let key2: Vec<u8> = key.iter().cycle().take(32).copied().collect();
    println!("key1:{} key2: {}", hex::encode(&key), hex::encode(&key2));

    let x1 = encrypt(&key, &iv, data).unwrap();
    println!("X1: {}", x1);

    let x2 = encrypt(&key2, &iv, data).unwrap();
    println!("X2: {}", x2);

    assert_eq!(x1, x2);
}

fn main() {
    working();
    broken();
}

The output from this program:

     Running `target/host/debug/rust-crypto-test`
key1:000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f key2: 000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f
X1: 90462bbe32965c8e7ea0addbbed4cddb
X2: 90462bbe32965c8e7ea0addbbed4cddb
key1:000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f key2: 000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f
X1: 26e847e5e7df1947bf82a650548a7d5b
X2: 90462bbe32965c8e7ea0addbbed4cddb
thread 'main' panicked at 'assertion failed: `(left == right)`
  left: `"26e847e5e7df1947bf82a650548a7d5b"`,
 right: `"90462bbe32965c8e7ea0addbbed4cddb"`', src/main.rs:83:5

Notably, the X1 key in the broken() test changes every time after rerunning the program.

GHSA-jp3w-3q88-34cf

RUSTSEC-2016-0005 (unmaintained) on 2016-09-06: rust-crypto is unmaintained; switch to a modern alternative

The rust-crypto crate has not seen a release or GitHub commit since 2016, and its author is unresponsive.

NOTE: The (old) rust-crypto crate (with hyphen) should not be confused with similarly named (new) RustCrypto GitHub Org (without hyphen). The GitHub Org is actively maintained.

We recommend you switch to one of the following crates instead, depending on which algorithms you need:

These reviews are from Crev, a distributed system for code reviews. To add your review, set up cargo-crev.

0.2.36 (current) Rating: Negative + Unmaintained Thoroughness: None Understanding: None

by kornelski on 2021-02-09

It's dead. Use something else.

0.2.36 (current) Rating: Neutral + Unmaintained Thoroughness: None Understanding: None

by dpc on 2019-11-04


Crates in the crates.io registry are tarball snapshots uploaded by crates' publishers. The registry is not using crates' git repositories. There is absolutely no guarantee that the repository URL declared by the crate belongs to the crate, or that the code in the repository is the code inside the published tarball.

To review the actual code of the crate, it's best to use cargo crev open rust-crypto. Alternatively, you can download the tarball of rust-crypto v0.2.36 or view the source online.