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fix(sdk): reject GMAC root signatures instead of trusting the manifest (DSPX-4703) - #1031

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DSPX-4703-reject-gmac-root
Sep 17, 2026
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DSPX-4703-reject-gmac-root

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@dmihalcik-virtru dmihalcik-virtru commented Sep 10, 2026 •

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The bug

A segment's GMAC hash is the AES-GCM tag the AEAD just computed over that
segment's ciphertext, so reading the trailing 16 bytes back out is legitimate
— the tag is a real MAC over real data under the real key.

The root signature covers the aggregate hash: a concatenation of the segment
hashes. AES-GCM never processed those bytes. Applying the same
trailing-bytes extraction to them returns a keyless copy of the last segment
hash — a value the attacker already has, since it is sitting in the manifest
they are handing you.

rootSignature.alg is read from the manifest, which is unauthenticated until
the root signature validates, and unknown values were coerced to HS256. So
the attack needs no key at all:

  1. Rewrite rootSignature.alg to GMAC.
  2. Truncate, reorder, or duplicate segments[] however you like.
  3. Recompute the "signature" as the last 16 bytes of the new aggregate hash.
  4. rootIntegrity reads those bytes back and agrees with itself.

AEAD tags bind no ordering, index, or count — each tag says only "this
ciphertext is intact," never "this is segment 3 of 7." The ordered segment
list is exactly and only what the root signature protects, which is why
losing it costs the whole structural guarantee: a 7-segment file becomes a
2-segment file, or the same segment repeated, and every remaining tag still
verifies.

The fix

Split the one overloaded getSignature into four functions that each say what
they authenticate:

HS256 GMAC
segmentIntegrity ✅ ✅ reads the AEAD tag
rootIntegrity ✅ ❌ IntegrityError

plus segmentIntegrityVersion422 / rootIntegrityVersion422 for the legacy
hex-then-base64 encoding. After the split there is no longer a code path that
can read a tag out of the aggregate hash, so the misuse isn't a policy check
that could be bypassed — it doesn't exist as a function.

On read, asRootIntegrityAlgorithm fails closed: anything other than HS256,
in any casing, raises IntegrityError instead of being coerced.
asSegmentIntegrityAlgorithm stays permissive about casing, since writers in
the wild emit both GMAC and gmac.

rootSignature.alg and segmentHashAlg are widened to plain strings in the
manifest types, which is the honest signature: they are attacker-controlled
until validated.

Don't launder the error we just raised

Raising an IntegrityError is only half of it; the caller has to receive one.
streamToBuffer drained the plaintext with
new Response(stream).arrayBuffer(), and Chrome replaces any error raised
while it pulls a Response body with a bare TypeError: Failed to fetch
,
discarding the original. So in the browser — and only in the browser — a
tampered payload arrived at the caller indistinguishable from a dropped
connection. That is exactly the distinction this PR exists to draw: the first
is an attack, the second is a retry.

Draining with a reader instead preserves the error the stream was errored
with. toString went through Response.text() and had the same problem; it
buffers first now. This is why DecoratedReadableStream.ts is in the diff of
an otherwise tdf.ts-shaped PR — without it the two payload-tampering tests
below pass under Node and fail under karma.

That change is also up on its own as #1035, against main. It is
orthogonal to the GMAC work — the masking predates it by two years — and it
is only carried here so this PR's tests can pass before #1035 lands. Once
#1035 merges, DecoratedReadableStream.ts and
tests/mocha/unit/decorated-readable-stream.spec.ts drop out of this diff on
the next rebase. Review it there, not here.

How to test

cd lib && npm run build && npx mocha 'dist/web/tests/mocha/root-signature.spec.js'

lib/tests/mocha/root-signature.spec.ts is new — 23 cases in four groups:

  • controls (6) — a repacked file round-trips; truncation, a hash edit, a
    reorder, and an unforged GMAC downgrade are all caught under HS256.
  • exploit: GMAC root downgrade (8) — the full keyless attack with
    truncated and with reordered segments, each of the four casings of GMAC,
    and an unknown algorithm that must not fall back to HS256.
  • segment integrity is unaffected (5) — GMAC and HS256 segments both
    round-trip and both still catch payload tampering; lowercase
    segmentHashAlg still reads; an unknown segment algorithm is refused.
  • legacy 4.2.2 (4) — hex-then-base64 HS256 still validates, truncation is
    still caught, and the GMAC downgrade is refused there too.

lib/tests/mocha/unit/decorated-readable-stream.spec.ts is also new — 7 cases
pinning that streamToBuffer concatenates correctly and that both it and
toBuffer/toString reject with the identical error instance the stream
was errored with, never a substitute. It lives under tests/mocha/unit/ so
webpack picks it up and it runs under karma as well as Node, which matters:
the masking only ever reproduced in Chrome.

Baseline

Run this PR's tests against #1030's code, i.e. everything here except the
tdf.ts fix:

14 passing
 9 failing

Every case under controls stays green, and the 9 failures are exactly the
8 exploit cases plus the lowercase-segmentHashAlg case. The exploit failures
are all "expected an IntegrityError" — the forged files decrypt cleanly on
unfixed code. With the fix, all 23 pass.

The streamToBuffer fix is pinned the same way: reverting it alone turns 409
karma passes into 6 failures — the two payload-tampering cases above plus four
of the seven error-propagation cases — while Node stays green throughout.

With both fixes the whole suite is green: 409 passing / 6 pending under mocha,
409 under karma, 253 under web-test-runner, coverage thresholds met, and
tsc --noEmit and npm run lint clean.

Risk

Crypto read path. Files that were previously accepted and are now rejected are
exactly the ones with a non-HS256 root signature, which had no integrity
guarantee to begin with. Legitimate GMAC-segment files are unaffected — that
path is unchanged and covered above. The write path already refused to produce
a GMAC root as of #1030.

Interop note

This SDK rejects an absent or empty rootSignature.alg; the Go and Java SDKs
default it to HS256. Both are safe, since the HMAC still has to verify
either way, and no golden file in xtest exercises it. Worth reconciling, but
not in this PR.

DSPX-4703

Cross-SDK coverage lives in opentdf/tests#594.

Summary by CodeRabbit

Security

  • Strengthened validation of manifest and segment integrity algorithms.
  • Root integrity verification now rejects unsupported, invalid, or downgraded algorithms.
  • Improved detection of tampering, including altered, reordered, or truncated segments.
  • Algorithm validation is case-insensitive where applicable and fails safely for unknown values.

Compatibility

  • Preserved validation support for legacy 4.2.2 files using supported root integrity settings.

Reliability

  • Stream and integrity errors now propagate accurately instead of being masked by generic browser errors.
  • Improved buffering and text decoding for streamed content.

@dmihalcik-virtru
dmihalcik-virtru requested a review from a team as a code owner September 10, 2026 16:20
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  • lib/tdf3/src/tdf.ts
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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The change separates root and segment integrity algorithms, adds fail-closed validation, preserves stream errors during buffering, and adds coverage for current and legacy TDF integrity behavior.

Changes

Integrity algorithm separation

Layer / File(s) Summary
Algorithm contracts and validation
lib/tdf3/src/models/encryption-information.ts, lib/tdf3/src/tdf.ts
Metadata accepts untrusted algorithm strings. Helpers normalize segment algorithms and restrict root algorithms to HS256.
Integrity processing and call-site wiring
lib/tdf3/src/tdf.ts
Dedicated helpers process GMAC and HS256 segment integrity, HS256 root integrity, current formats, and legacy 4.2.2 encoding.
Integrity tampering coverage
lib/tests/mocha/root-signature.spec.ts
Tests cover truncation, reordering, hash edits, algorithm downgrades, unknown algorithms, segment integrity, and legacy root verification.

Stream error preservation

Layer / File(s) Summary
Error-preserving stream buffering
lib/tdf3/src/client/DecoratedReadableStream.ts
Stream buffering reads chunks directly and preserves original stream errors. String conversion decodes the buffered bytes with TextDecoder.
Stream error and decoding coverage
lib/tests/mocha/unit/decorated-readable-stream.spec.ts
Tests cover chunk ordering, empty streams, original error propagation, and split UTF-8 characters.

Priority: ➖ Normal

Estimated code review effort: 4 (Complex) | ~45 minutes

Change: Bug fix

Suggested reviewers: abarabash-virtru, pflynn-virtru

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Client
  participant tdf.ts
  participant Manifest
  participant WebCryptoService
  Client->>tdf.ts: decrypt TDF
  tdf.ts->>Manifest: read integrity algorithms and root signature
  tdf.ts->>WebCryptoService: compute root HMAC
  WebCryptoService-->>tdf.ts: return computed integrity value
  tdf.ts->>tdf.ts: validate root and segment integrity
  tdf.ts-->>Client: return plaintext or IntegrityError
Loading

Merge Risk: 🟡 Moderate · up to 3a351

Valid legacy 4.2.2 files using HS256 segment integrity can fail to decrypt. Align the legacy reader with the writer before merging.

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❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name Status Explanation Resolution
Docstring Coverage ⚠️ Warning Docstring coverage is 58.06% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 31 functions across 5 files. Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.
✅ Passed checks (4 passed)
Check name Status Explanation
Description Check ✅ Passed Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check ✅ Passed The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: rejecting GMAC root signatures instead of trusting the manifest.
Linked Issues check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
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A rabbit checks each root and stream,
With HS256 guarding every dream.
GMAC hops where segments lie,
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Base automatically changed from DSPX-4736-integrity-algorithm-controls to main September 11, 2026 14:28
…t (DSPX-4703)

A segment's `GMAC` hash is the AES-GCM tag the AEAD just computed over that
segment's ciphertext, so reading the trailing 16 bytes back out is legitimate.
The root signature covers the aggregate hash — a concatenation of segment
hashes that AES-GCM never processed — so applying the same trailing-bytes
extraction there returns a keyless copy of the last segment hash rather than
anything authenticated.

Because `rootSignature.alg` is read from the unauthenticated manifest and
unknown values were coerced to HS256, an attacker with no key could rewrite
`alg` to `GMAC`, recompute the "signature" from the segment hashes they were
handing over anyway, and then truncate, reorder, or duplicate segments
undetected. AEAD tags bind no ordering, index, or count, so the ordered
segment list is exactly what only the root signature protects.

Split the one overloaded `getSignature` into four functions that say what
they authenticate — `segmentIntegrity`/`rootIntegrity` and their 4.2.2
hex-then-base64 counterparts — so the aggregate hash no longer has a code path
that can read a tag out of it. `segmentIntegrity` accepts HS256 and GMAC;
`rootIntegrity` accepts only HS256. On read, `asRootIntegrityAlgorithm` fails
closed: anything other than HS256, in any casing, raises an
`IntegrityError` rather than being coerced. `asSegmentIntegrityAlgorithm`
stays permissive about casing, since existing writers emit both spellings.

Manifest types widen `rootSignature.alg` and `segmentHashAlg` to plain strings
to reflect that they are attacker-controlled until validated.

Also stop `streamToBuffer` from laundering the error it now raises. It drained
the plaintext with `new Response(stream).arrayBuffer()`, and Chrome replaces
*any* error raised while it pulls a Response body with a bare
`TypeError: Failed to fetch`. So in the browser — and only there — a tampered
payload arrived at the caller indistinguishable from a dropped connection,
which is precisely the distinction this commit exists to make: the first is an
attack and the second is a retry. Draining with a reader instead preserves the
`IntegrityError`. `toString` went through `Response.text()` and had the same
problem; it now buffers first.

Verified against the previous commit as a baseline: with this commit's tests
run on the unfixed code, 14 pass and 9 fail — every case under `controls`
stays green while all 8 `exploit: GMAC root downgrade` cases and the
lowercase-`segmentHashAlg` case fail. The `streamToBuffer` fix is pinned the
same way: reverting it alone turns 409 karma passes into 6 failures — the two
payload-tampering cases plus the four error-propagation cases in
`tests/mocha/unit/decorated-readable-stream.spec.ts` — while Node stays green,
since the masking only ever reproduced in Chrome. With both fixes the whole
suite is green: 409 passing / 6 pending under mocha, 409 under karma, and 253
under web-test-runner.

Signed-off-by: Dave Mihalcik <dmihalcik@virtru.com>
@dmihalcik-virtru
dmihalcik-virtru force-pushed the DSPX-4703-reject-gmac-root branch from 6be3fab to 3643abe Compare September 11, 2026 14:28

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Inline comments:
In `@lib/tdf3/src/tdf.ts`:
- Line 1220: Update the segment integrity calculation around segmentIntegrity to
use segmentIntegrityVersion422 when isTargetSpecLegacyTDF(specVersion) is true,
preserving segmentIntegrity for current TDFs. Compare the legacy function’s
base64-encoded hex result directly against the stored signature so legacy HS256
files validate consistently.

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Comment thread lib/tdf3/src/tdf.ts
Comment thread lib/tdf3/src/tdf.ts Outdated
@dmihalcik-virtru
dmihalcik-virtru requested a review from a team September 14, 2026 19:29
Comment thread lib/tests/mocha/root-signature.spec.ts Outdated
pflynn-virtru added a commit that referenced this pull request Sep 14, 2026
Red phase only. Every test here reproduces a defect found reviewing #1031;
none of them are fixed, so `cd lib && npm test` fails on this branch by
design. Each new describe carries controls that pass, so a failure is
attributable to the defect and not to the harness.

Runtime failures (16 under mocha, 17 under karma):

- 4.2.2 + HS256 segments write an archive nothing can read. The legacy
  writer HMACs a lossy UTF-8 round-trip of the ciphertext; the reader HMACs
  the raw bytes. Newly reachable since #1030 made the algorithm settable.
- A tampered file that fails in more than one segment leaves an unhandled
  rejection even when the caller catches the error, because only the first
  failed chunk is ever awaited.
- A CryptoService whose hmac returns a pooled view (the obvious Node
  implementation) writes 4.2.2 files that fail their own read: the writer
  hex-encodes sig.buffer, the reader hex-encodes the view.
- Malformed manifests surface as bare TypeError / InvalidCharacterError
  rather than TdfError, on the same read path this PR hardens.
- A GMAC-rooted file still costs a full KAS rewrap before it is refused.
- Assertions -- including attacker-supplied JWT headers that name their own
  verification key -- are interpreted before the root signature is checked.
- Unknown-but-not-forgeable root algorithms are reported as tampering
  rather than as unsupported. (This contradicts an assertion in
  root-signature.spec.ts, which is the point: both cannot hold.)
- streamToBuffer returns an empty or all-zero buffer, reported as success,
  for any chunk that is not a Uint8Array; and decrypt no longer accepts the
  stream sources fromSource still does.
- seekable.ts still drains {type:'stream'} through Response, so the modern
  OpenTDF read path launders an IntegrityError into "Failed to fetch". Red
  in the karma run only, which is where the masking happens.
- Two controls added to root-signature.spec.ts show the file's own fixtures
  are inert: the forged 4.2.2 GMAC signature is not one any 4.2.2 reader
  would compare against, and reverseSegments silently drops bytes on a
  payload that is not an exact multiple of the segment size.

Type-level failure:

- tests/types holds @ts-expect-error assertions that the manifest's alg
  fields carry the invariant tdf.ts documents. `alg: RootIntegrityAlgorithm
  | string` collapses to string, so they do not. Checked by a new
  `npm run test:types`, run after the suite so it cannot mask the runtime
  failures, and excluded from the build's tsconfig for the same reason.

New specs share tests/mocha/helpers/tdf-fixtures.ts rather than adding a
third copy of the scaffolding; folding the existing two specs into it is
left alone here.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul Flynn <pflynn-virtru@users.noreply.github.com>
@dmihalcik-virtru
dmihalcik-virtru removed this pull request from stack #1038 September 17, 2026 13:52
dmihalcik-virtru and others added 3 commits September 17, 2026 09:52
Co-authored-by: Paul Flynn <43211074+pflynn-virtru@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Paul Flynn <43211074+pflynn-virtru@users.noreply.github.com>
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@dmihalcik-virtru
dmihalcik-virtru merged commit 1ed7b9a into main Sep 17, 2026
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@dmihalcik-virtru
dmihalcik-virtru deleted the DSPX-4703-reject-gmac-root branch September 17, 2026 14:29
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