PHP JWT Library: RSA1_5 (RSAES-PKCS1-v1_5) decryption lacks implicit rejection, exposing a Bleichenbacher/Marvin padding oracle

Impact

RSACrypt::decryptWithRSA15() (used by the RSA1_5 key-encryption algorithm) implements RSAES-PKCS1-v1_5 decryption by inspecting the padding after RSADP and throwing InvalidArgumentException as soon as the padding is malformed. It does not implement the implicit-rejection countermeasure required by RFC 3447 §7.2.2 / RFC 8017 §7.1.2 (return a deterministic pseudo-random value of the expected length on padding failure and let the downstream step fail uniformly).

From a JWE caller this yields a Bleichenbacher/Marvin padding oracle: an attacker submitting adaptively crafted encrypted_key values can distinguish (a) padding rejected, (b) padding valid but wrong CEK length, and (c) padding valid and full AEAD executed — even though JWEDecrypter returns the same false in all cases — because each path performs a measurably different amount of work, amplifiable by enlarging the ciphertext (CWE-208 timing side channel). Enough adaptive queries can recover the wrapped CEK.

Affected configurations

Applications that register RSA1_5 in their decryption AlgorithmManager and hold an RSA private key.

Patches

PKCS#1 v1.5 decryption now performs implicit rejection: on invalid padding (or unexpected recovered length) it returns a random CEK of the expected size selected in constant time, so the full content-decryption (AEAD) step always runs and fails uniformly, removing the observable difference between padding-valid and padding-invalid ciphertexts. Users are still strongly encouraged to migrate to RSA-OAEP.

Workarounds

Prefer RSA-OAEP/RSA-OAEP-256; do not enable RSA1_5 for untrusted tokens.

References

• RFC 3447 §7.2.2 / RFC 8017 §7.1.2
• Bleichenbacher (1998); Marvin attack
• CWE-208: Observable Timing Discrepancy

Résolution

Un correctif a été préparé sur une branche dédiée basée sur 3.4.x, avec des tests anti-régression dédiés (fork privé temporaire de cette advisory, PR #1).

RSA1_5 — déchiffrement PKCS#1 v1.5 avec implicit rejection en temps constant (RFC 3447 §7.2.2) : un padding invalide n'est plus distinguable d'un padding valide, neutralisant l'oracle Bleichenbacher.

Validation : php -l OK, PHPUnit vert, aucune nouvelle erreur PHPStan introduite (différentiel nul vs 3.4.x), aucun commentaire ajouté dans le code source. Après merge, cascade prévue 3.4.x → 4.0.x → 4.1.x.