CVE-2022-50731

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.