Subject: Re: bug#47222: Serious bug in Nettle's ecdsa_verify

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2021 22:46:50 +0200

Hi!

(- Niels, - nettle-bugs)

[email-masked] (Niels Möller) skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> Are there plans to make a new 3.5 release including these fixes?
>
> No, I don't plan any 3.5.x release.
>
>> Alternatively, could you provide guidance as to which commits should be
>> cherry-picked in 3.5 for downstream distros?
>
> Look at the branch release-3.7-fixes
> (https://git.lysator.liu.se/nettle/nettle/-/commits/release-3.7-fixes/).
> The commits since 3.7.1 are the ones you need.
>
> Changes to gostdsa and ed448 will not apply, since those curves didn't
> exist in nettle-3.5. Changes to ed25519 might not apply cleanly, due to
> refactoring when adding ed448.

I confirm these patches don’t apply, and I’m not comfortable fiddling
with that.

Leo and I checked and found that Debian doesn’t have 3.5.  Do other
distros have backports of these patches to 3.5?

If not, our options are:

  1. to invest in the backport ourselves, with good peer review, ideally
     getting it stamped by Niels & co;

  2. to wait until a full rebuild has come.

It’s not an ideal situation.  Thoughts?

Ludo’.