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Beyond the underlying mathematics of cryptographic algorithms, there is a whole other layer of implementation code, assigning meaning to the processed data. For example, a signature verification operation both needs robust cryptography and assurance that the verified data is indeed the same as was passed into the signing operation. To facilitate the second part, software such as GnuPG implement parsing and processing code of a standardized format. Especially when implementing a feature rich and evolving standard, there is the risk of ambivalent specification, and classical implementation bugs.
The impact of the vulnerabilities we found reaches from various signature verification bypasses, breaking encryption in transit and encryption at rest, undermining key signatures, to exploitable memory corruption vulnerabilities.