• Carelessness versus craftsmanship in cryptography Two popular AES libraries, aes-js and pyaes, “helpfully” provide a default IV in their AES-CTR API, leading to a large number of key/IV reuse bugs. • These bugs potentially affect thousands of downstream projects. • When we shared one of these bugs with an affected vendor, strongSwan, the maintainer provided a model response for security vendors. • The aes-js/pyaes maintainer, on the other hand, has taken a more… cavalier approach. • Trail of Bits doesn’t usually make a point of publicly calling out specific products as unsafe. • Our motto is that we don’t just fix bugs-we fix software.
Article Summaries:
- Carelessness versus craftsmanship in cryptography Two popular AES libraries, aes-js and pyaes, “helpfully” provide a default IV in their AES-CTR API, leading to a large number of key/IV reuse bugs. These bugs potentially affect thousands of downstream projects. When we shared one of these bugs with an affected vendor, strongSwan, the maintainer provided a model response for security vendors. The aes-js/pyaes maintainer, on the other hand, has taken a more… cavalier approach. Trail of Bits doesn’t usually make a point of publicly calling out specific products as unsafe. Our motto is that we don
Sources:
- https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/02/18/carelessness-versus-craftsmanship-in-cryptography/ (Latest source article published: 2026-02-18 12:00 UTC)