Tomb/KNOWN_BUGS.md
2018-09-23 12:05:02 +02:00

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# Whitespaces in KDF passwords
## Issue affecting passwords used with PBKDF2 keys (<2.6)
Up until and including Tomb's version 2.5 the PBKDF2 wrapper for keys
in Tomb has a bug affecting passwords that contain whitespaces. Since
the passwords are trimmed at the first whitespace, this makes them
weaker, while fortunately the KDF transformation still applies.
This issue is fixed in Tomb version 2.6: all users adopting KDF keys
that have passwords containing whitespaces should change them,
knowing that their "old password" is trimmed until the whitespace.
Users adopting GPG keys or plain (without KDF wrapper) can ignore
this bug.
# Vulnerability to password bruteforcing
## Issue affecting keys used in steganography
An important part of Tomb's security model is to *make it hard for
attackers to enter in possession of both key and data storage*: once
that happens, bruteforcing the password can be relatively easy.
Protection from bruteforcing is provided by the KDF module that can
be optionally compiled in `extras/kdf-keys` and installed.
If a key is buried in an image and then the image is stolen, the KDF
protection does not works because *attackers can bruteforce easily
using steghide dictionary attacks*: once found the password is the
same for the steg crypto and the key crypto.
Users should keep in mind these issues when planning their encryption
scheme and, when relying on steganography, keep the image always
mixed in the same folder with many more images since that will be the
multiplier making it slightly harder to bruteforce their password.
In most cases consider that *password bruteforce is a feasible attack
vector on keys*. If there are doubts about a key being compromised is
a good practice to change it using the `setkey` command on a secure
machine, possibly while off-line or in single user mode.
# Ending newline in tomb keys
## 2.2
When used to forge new keys, Tomb version 2.2 incorrectly added a new
line ('\n', 0x0A) character at the end of each key's secret sequence
before encoding it with GnuPG. This does not affect Tomb regression
and compatibility with other Tomb versions as this final newline is
ignored in any case, but third party software may have
problems. Those writing a software that supports opening Tomb files
should always ignore the final newline when present in the secret
material obtained after decoding the key with the password.
# Versioning and stdin key
## 1.5
Due to distraction tomb version 1.5 displays its version as 1.4.
Also version 1.5 did not work when using -k - to pipe keys from
stdin, plus left the encrypted keys laying around in RAM (tmpfs).
This was a minor vulnerability fixed in 1.5.1.
# Key compatibility broken
## 1.3 and 1.3.1
Due to an error in the creation and decoding of key files, release
versions 1.3 and 1.3.1 cannot open older tombs, plus the tombs created
with them will not be opened with older and newer versions of Tomb.
This bug was fixed in commit 551a7839f500a9ba4b26cd63774019d91615cb16
Those who have created tombs with older versions can simply upgrade
to release 1.4 (and any other following release) to fix this issue
and be able to operate their tombs normally.
Those who have used Tomb 1.3 or 1.3.1 to create new tombs should use
Tomb version 1.3.1 (available from https://files.dyne.org/tomb) to
open them and then migrate the contents into a new tomb created using
the latest stable Tomb version.
This bug was due to a typo in the code which appended a GnuPG status
string to the content of keys. All users of Tomb 1.3.* should pay
particular attention to this issue, however that release series was
out as latest for less than a month.