Skip to content

docs: record CBC unpadding timing-policy exception - #409

Merged
lannbot merged 2 commits into
mainfrom
docs/cbc-timing-policy
Sep 8, 2026
Merged

docs: record CBC unpadding timing-policy exception#409
lannbot merged 2 commits into
mainfrom
docs/cbc-timing-policy

Conversation

@lannbot

@lannbot lannbot commented Sep 8, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Contributor

Decision

Keep CBC exported for fixed-format compatibility and explicitly record its variable-time PKCS#7 unpadding as an exception to the provider's constant-time-variant policy. Class C describes the fixsliced AES core, not end-to-end CBC padding validation.

Replace the incorrect branch-free-unpadding and timing-bounded-by-error claims in the provider README and core comment. Clarify the consumer-facing WIT contract: returned errors are uniform, but that does not guarantee uniform execution timing. The residual risk applies to both CBC decryption and key unwrapping; AES-GCM remains the recommendation where the format is not fixed.

This resolves the documentation/policy contradiction left by #336, not the underlying variable-time behavior. No claim of measured remote exploitability or a timing fix. Documentation/comments only: no implementation, signatures, exports, dependencies, or test expectations change.

Verification

  • Inspected the pinned block-padding 0.3.3 validator and the core's CBC decrypt path.
  • just fmt-check
  • just validate-wit
  • git diff --check

Automerge will be armed and CI watched.

Fixes #405

@lannbot
lannbot enabled auto-merge September 8, 2026 17:09
@lannbot
lannbot merged commit f799982 into main Sep 8, 2026
10 checks passed
@lannbot
lannbot deleted the docs/cbc-timing-policy branch September 8, 2026 17:28
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

Guest provider: resolve CBC padding timing-policy contradiction left by #336

2 participants