Insecure Default Authentication Tag Size in AES-GCM Specification

Insecure Default Authentication Tag Size in AES-GCM Specification

CVE-2016-2427 · MEDIUM Severity

AV:N/AC:M/AU:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

The AES-GCM specification in RFC 5084, as used in Android 5.x and 6.x, recommends 12 octets for the aes-ICVlen parameter field, which might make it easier for attackers to defeat a cryptographic protection mechanism and discover an authentication key via a crafted application, aka internal bug 26234568. NOTE: The vendor disputes the existence of this potential issue in Android, stating "This CVE was raised in error: it referred to the authentication tag size in GCM, whose default according to ASN.1 encoding (12 bytes) can lead to vulnerabilities. After careful consideration, it was decided that the insecure default value of 12 bytes was a default only for the encoding and not default anywhere else in Android, and hence no vulnerability existed.

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