CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2024-45039

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

Published: Sep 06, 2024 | Modified: Sep 20, 2024
CVSS 3.x
6.2
MEDIUM
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
CVSS 2.x
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

gnark is a fast zk-SNARK library that offers a high-level API to design circuits. Versions prior to 0.11.0 have a soundness issue - in case of multiple commitments used inside the circuit the prover is able to choose all but the last commitment. As gnark uses the commitments for optimized non-native multiplication, lookup checks etc. as random challenges, then it could impact the soundness of the whole circuit. However, using multiple commitments has been discouraged due to the additional cost to the verifier and it has not been supported in the recursive in-circuit Groth16 verifier and Solidity verifier. gnarks maintainers expect the impact of the issue be very small - only for the users who have implemented the native Groth16 verifier or are using it with multiple commitments. We do not have information of such users. The issue has been patched in version 0.11.0. As a workaround, users should follow gnark maintainers recommendation to use only a single commitment and then derive in-circuit commitments as needed using the std/multicommit package.

Weakness

The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Gnark-crypto Consensys * 0.11.0 (excluding)

Extended Description

There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:

Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:

Information exposures can occur in different ways:

It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.

Potential Mitigations

  • Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
  • Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

References