Quoting sipa (see https://github.com/bitcoin-core/secp256k1/pull/1479#discussion_r1790079414):
"When performing an EC multiplication A = aG for secret a, the resulting
_affine_ coordinates of A are presumed to not leak information about a (ECDLP),
but the same is not necessarily true for the Jacobian coordinates that come
out of our multiplication algorithm."
For the ECDH point multiplication result, the result in Jacobi coordinates should be
cleared not only to avoid leaking the scalar, but even more so as it's a representation
of the resulting shared secret.
This gives the caller more control about whether the state should
be cleaned (= should be considered secret). Moreover, it gives the
caller the possibility to clean a hash struct without finalizing it.
All of the invocations of secp256k1_memclear() operate on stack
memory and happen after the function is done with the memory object.
This commit replaces existing memset() invocations and also adds
secp256k1_memclear() to code locations where clearing was missing;
there is no guarantee that this commit covers all code locations
where clearing is necessary.
Co-Authored-By: isle2983 <isle2983@yahoo.com>
7b50483ad7 Adds a declassify operation to aid constant-time analysis. (Gregory Maxwell)
34a67c773b Eliminate harmless non-constant time operations on secret data. (Gregory Maxwell)
Pull request description:
There were several places where the code was non-constant time
for invalid secret inputs. These are harmless under sane use
but get in the way of automatic const-time validation.
(Nonce overflow in signing is not addressed, nor is s==0 in signing)
ACKs for top commit:
sipa:
utACK 7b50483ad7
real-or-random:
ACK 7b50483ad7 I read the code carefully and tested it
jonasnick:
reACK 7b50483ad7
Tree-SHA512: 0776c3a86e723d2f97b9b9cb31d0d0e59dfcf308093b3f46fbc859f73f9957f3fa977d03b57727232040368d058701ef107838f9b1ec98f925ec78ddad495c4e
There were several places where the code was non-constant time
for invalid secret inputs. These are harmless under sane use
but get in the way of automatic const-time validation.
(Nonce overflow in signing is not addressed, nor is s==0 in
signing)
Identifiers starting with an underscore and followed immediately by a capital letter are reserved by the C++ standard.
The only header guards not fixed are those in the headers auto-generated from java.
