Commit Graph
2 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
Bernd RodlerandClaude Opus 4.8 bc5d2a57e8 security(smime): fix audit finding 2 — unauthenticated CBC on decrypt
Upstream applied no content-encryption check at all on decrypt, and ran
every decryption through the liner engine — which registers DES-CBC,
3DES-CBC and RC2-CBC. Those OIDs exist in crypto-engine.js for PKCS#12
password-based encryption; the CMS content path merely reused the same
engine and inherited them. A crafted message could therefore be decrypted
under a broken cipher, and unauthenticated plaintext was handed straight
to the renderer — the EFAIL precondition.

The obvious fix would have been wrong. Accepting only AEAD breaks most
real S/MIME mail: RFC 5751 makes AES-128-CBC the MUST-implement content
cipher, Outlook and Thunderbird default to CBC, and AES-GCM in CMS
(RFC 5084) is barely deployed. An AEAD-only allowlist is a functionality
catastrophe wearing a security fix's clothes.

Three layers instead:

1. Allowlist the AES family and refuse everything else, with the gate
   running before any private key is touched. CBC stays for interop;
   DES/3DES/RC2 are refused.

2. Take the mail path off the legacy engine. Normal decryption now uses
   nativeEngine(); the liner engine is reachable only when a genuine
   legacy RSAES-PKCS1-v1_5 key is in play. This removes the weak ciphers
   structurally rather than by policy — native WebCrypto handles RSA-OAEP
   key transport and AES-CBC/GCM content perfectly well.

3. Refuse to render unauthenticated plaintext as HTML. CBC output is
   malleable and HTML is EFAIL's exfiltration channel. The host does block
   remote content by default (allowExternalContent starts false), but that
   is a user/admin setting this plugin cannot observe, so we don't lean on
   it. New renderUnauthenticatedHtml setting (default false) is the
   documented opt-out. Our own encrypt path always uses AES-GCM, so mail
   we send renders fully; only legacy inbound CBC degrades to text.

Built from source with the repo's own pipeline (esbuild, 1.69 MB) and
packaged to smime-vnc.zip (0.27 MB). All four fixes verified present in
the built bundle. Build output is gitignored — never vendor a prebuilt
bundle, which was the upstream mistake.

Correcting an earlier assumption: this bundle does NOT trip the B-01
pattern scanner (zero matches on all five patterns), so the override is
not needed to install it. B-01 remains correct — it closed a real
entrypoint-only coverage gap — but it isn't load-bearing here.

verify-fixes.mjs now carries 36 assertions covering all three fixes,
including source checks that fail if a guard is removed, if a legacy CBC
OID reappears in the allowlist, or if the mail path stops using the
native engine.

Findings 4 (unlocked keys persisted to IndexedDB), 5 (parser DoS) and 6
(PKCS1v1.5 oracle surface) remain open.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-04 10:47:43 +02:00
Bernd RodlerandClaude Opus 4.8 f7e487171c security(smime): fork upstream plugin and fix two audit findings
S-01 audited bulwarkmail/plugins/smime @ 91085a3 (2,935 lines). Nine
findings, two HIGH. No backdoor and no exfiltration path anywhere in the
bundle — the problems are trust-model and input-validation gaps. Full
report in vnc/audits/SMIME-PLUGIN-AUDIT-2026-08-04.md.

Fork is source-only. The upstream smime.zip is a 1.77 MB prebuilt bundle
whose manifest reads 1.0.1 while the source reads 1.0.2, so auditing
src/ would not audit what that zip installs. We build from source.

Finding 1 (HIGH) — certificate substitution. maybeAutoImportSigner gated
on signatureValid alone, but smimeVerify runs checkChain:false, so that
only proves "signed by whoever holds this key", not that the claimed
identity is real. Self-sign a cert asserting victim@example.com, send one
signed message, and it was stored as the encryption target for that
address — the user's next Encrypt to the victim went to the attacker.
Now requires signerEmailMatch === true and !selfSigned. Both values were
already computed and displayed as untrusted in the banner; only the
import path ignored them. Tests for `true` explicitly so an undefined
match (missing From header) fails closed.

Finding 3 (MED-HIGH) — CRLF header injection. Escaping reached only
Subject and attachment filename; display names, raw addresses,
Message-ID, In-Reply-To, References and attachment Content-Type were
emitted verbatim, and formatAddress escapes only backslash and quote.
In-Reply-To/References/display names are copied from inbound mail when
replying or forwarding, so the value is attacker-supplied. Sanitising
inside formatHeader covers all 17 call sites by construction; the three
headers assembled directly get stripCrlf explicitly.

Also adds auth:observe to the manifest. The plugin registers
onAfterLogout/onAccountSwitch — real hooks (lib/plugin-hooks.ts:362-363)
— without declaring the permission, so under B-09 the session-key wipe
would silently stop running.

verify-fixes.mjs carries 19 assertions including source checks that fail
if either guard is removed or a new unsanitised interpolated header
appears. That last one immediately caught the interpolated smime-type
Content-Type header, which manual review had dismissed as static.

Finding 2 (unauthenticated CBC accepted on decrypt) is NOT fixed. This
is not safe for real mail yet — sandbox accounts only.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-04 10:00:11 +02:00