published December 24, 2025
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
crypto: akcipher - default implementation for setting a private key
Changes from v1:
* removed the default implementation from set_pub_key: it is assumed that
an implementation must always have this callback defined as there are
no use case for an algorithm, which doesn't need a public key
Many akcipher implementations (like ECDSA) support only signature
verifications, so they don't have all callbacks defined.
Commit 78a0324f4a53 ("crypto: akcipher - default implementations for
request callbacks") introduced default callbacks for sign/verify
operations, which just return an error code.
However, these are not enough, because before calling sign the caller would
likely call set_priv_key first on the instantiated transform (as the
in-kernel testmgr does). This function does not have a default stub, so the
kernel crashes, when trying to set a private key on an akcipher, which
doesn't support signature generation.
I've noticed this, when trying to add a KAT vector for ECDSA signature to
the testmgr.
With this patch the testmgr returns an error in dmesg (as it should)
instead of crashing the kernel NULL ptr dereference.