Research
Security News
Malicious npm Packages Inject SSH Backdoors via Typosquatted Libraries
Socket’s threat research team has detected six malicious npm packages typosquatting popular libraries to insert SSH backdoors.
Just as it's possible to write a TCP/IP protocol stack in some utterly inappropriate programing language like ML or Visual Basic, so too, it's possible to implement TCP/IP over carrier pidgeons, or paper tape, or demons summoned from the vasty deep.
-- Stross, C., The Jennifer Morgue
This package provides a pure-JavaScript bitsliced AES implementation, as logical operations on 32 bit unsigned integers, ported from the Go port of the BearSSL code.
As a concession to performance and the futility of pure-JS crypto,
a variable time table based AESENC
analog is also provided in the
unsafe
sub-module.
THIS IS NOT INTENDED AS A GENERAL PURPOSE AES IMPLEMENTATION. Unless
you need access to AES algorithm internals (ie: AddRoundKey
, SubBytes
,
ShiftRows
, and or MixColumns
) it is strongly recommended that you use
crypto
instead.
While sensible languages and compilers generally would transform an AES implementation of this design into something that is timing side-channel free, JavaScript and it's various implementations are not sensible by any common definition of the word.
The inverse transformations are not currently implemented for reasons of brevity.
The bitsliced nature of the implementation means that under the hood each operation is applied to 2 blocks at once. This can be used to increase performance of certain constructs.
If timing side-channels are beyond your threat model, this could be more easily accomplished via a table driven implementation, with better performance.
The package is not documented as developers that can't figure it out really have no business using it, at all.
FAQs
Advanced Encryption Standard
We found that bsaes demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
Did you know?
Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.
Research
Security News
Socket’s threat research team has detected six malicious npm packages typosquatting popular libraries to insert SSH backdoors.
Security News
MITRE's 2024 CWE Top 25 highlights critical software vulnerabilities like XSS, SQL Injection, and CSRF, reflecting shifts due to a refined ranking methodology.
Security News
In this segment of the Risky Business podcast, Feross Aboukhadijeh and Patrick Gray discuss the challenges of tracking malware discovered in open source softare.