Past-traffic decryption via omitted ephemeral key exchange
Published May 24, 2023 · Updated Jan 16, 2025
Lack of forward secrecy in Briar before 1.5.3 allows attackers to decrypt captured traffic after compromising both accounts. The Bramble Handshake Protocol omits the ephemeral-to-ephemeral X25519 result from the master-key hash, allowing retained static handshake secrets and a recorded transcript to reconstruct past keys. Exploitation requires capture of the handshake plus later compromise of both accounts, but Briar routes every such handshake through encrypted Tor v3 hidden-service sessions, which prevents the required capture.
Summary
What happened
Lack of forward secrecy in Briar before 1.5.3 allows attackers to decrypt captured traffic after compromising both accounts. The Bramble Handshake Protocol omits the ephemeral-to-ephemeral X25519 result from the master-key hash, allowing retained static handshake secrets and a recorded transcript to reconstruct past keys. Exploitation requires capture of the handshake plus later compromise of both accounts, but Briar routes every such handshake through encrypted Tor v3 hidden-service sessions, which prevents the required capture.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-33982
- Published
- May 24, 2023
- Updated
- Jan 16, 2025
- Vendor
- Unknown vendor
- Product
- Unknown product
- Classifications
- CWE-326, T1040
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- May 24, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Jan 16, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
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What is affected?
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Attacks
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Technologies
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