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BoringSSL private key loading is not constant time


From: Billy Brumley <bbb () iki fi>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2025 04:03:09 -0400 (EDT)

Howdy Folks,

I spoke at the OpenSSL Conference in Prague last week, where I stepped through the following demo I wrote

https://gitlab.com/platsec/boringssl-keyload-vuln

This was on BoringSSL main HEAD. (At the time, at least.)

Here "constant time" is in the cryptographic sense. Time to load a private key should not depend on bits of said key taking certain values, yet it does in BoringSSL's implementation. Constant-time crypto code seems to be important to BoringSSL / Google.

I'm providing this information (and PoC) to the community in the spirit of transparency.

Cheers,

BBB

--
Dr. Billy B. Brumley, D.Sc. (Tech.)
Director of Research, ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute (GCI)
Kevin O'Sullivan Endowed Professor, Department of Cybersecurity (CSEC)
Director, Platform Security Laboratory (PLATSEC)
Rochester Institute of Technology
Cybersecurity Hall 70-1770
100 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY, 14623-5608, USA
S/MIME public key: https://people.rit.edu/bbbics/bbbics () rit edu crt
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https://www.rit.edu/cybersecurity/

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