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AES-ECB Padding Attack

Last modified: 2023-09-04

AES ECB (Electronic CodeBook) mode is vulnerable to guess plaintext/ciphertext without knowing the key by using padding.

How It Works

In ECB mode, plaintext is separated into each block with fixed size (e.g. 16, 32, etc.) and encrypt individually, then each block will be concatenated at the end. Below is the flow.

# 1. Input plaintext ('1'*32) to encrypt
11111111111111111111111111111111

# 2. Separate into each block with 16-bytes size
1111111111111111 1111111111111111

# 3. Encrypt each block
ENC(1111111111111111) ENC(1111111111111111)

# 4. Concatenate each encrypted block
ENC(1111111111111111)+ENC(1111111111111111)

# 5. Convert to hex at the end for the output
HEX(ENC(1111111111111111)+ENC(1111111111111111))

If we input a plaintext which cannot be separated the same size e.g. 31 characters string (1-byte is missing) as below, the plaintext needs to be padded for adjusting the byte size before separating.

# 1. Input plaintext ('1'*31) to encrypt <- This is a half-assed!
1111111111111111111111111111111

# 2. Need to pad it for allowing to separate each block with the same size (31 bytes -> 32 bytes)
1111111111111111111111111111111\x01

# 3. Separate it into each block with 16-bytes size
1111111111111111 111111111111111\x01

# 4. Encrypt each block
ENC(1111111111111111) ENC(111111111111111\x01)

# 5. Concatenate each encrypted text
ENC(1111111111111111)+ENC(111111111111111\x01)

# 6. Convert to hex at the end
HEX(ENC(1111111111111111)+ENC(111111111111111\x01))

As above, we can read each encrypted block (ENC(1111111111111111) and ENC(111111111111111\x01)) from the encrypted text because these are just concatenated.
Below is the example for reading each block.

# ENC(block1) ENC(block2) ENC(block3) ...
10051f1ff9987235 98f9c701e7500cf4 0d2b81c920b42a89 054d01bc5ccf8eab ba37248efc4d894e c7b0f3499a478699 5ccdf3f5dff54477 8460b5acf8c2f931

Using this separating mechanism, we can manipulate plaintext and retrieve the FLAG without knowing the secret key.


Exploitation (Example Challenge)

The following Python script encrypts 'arbitrary plaintext' + FLAG with AES-ECB mode. Assume that we don't know the secret key and FLAG text.
Our challenge is to find the FLAG text.

from Crypto.Cipher import AES
from Crypto.Util.Padding import pad

key = b'????????????????' # Unknown 16-byte key
FLAG = b'FLAG{???}' # Unknown flag

def encrypt(plaintext):
	padded = pad(plaintext + FLAG, 16)
	cipher = AES.new(key, AES.MODE_ECB)

	ciphertext = cipher.encrypt(padded)
	return ciphertext.hex()


plaintext = b'hello' # Arbitrary text
print(encrypt(plaintext))

Although we don't know the secret key, we can find the FLAG by exploiting how EBC mode works and padding mechanism.

1. Manipulate Plaintext

Since this script adds the unknown FLAG text to our plaintext as follow.

# Our plaintext 'test' + 'FLAG{unknown}'
testFLAG{unknown}

If we input 31-bytes string ('1' * 31), the string will be padded and separated into each block with 16-bytes size. As a result, the middle block will be '111111111111111F'.

# 1. Our plaintext ('1'*31) + 'FLAG{unknown}'
1111111111111111111111111111111FLAG{unknown}

# 2. Separate it into each block with 16-bytes. The last string is padded to 16-bytes.
1111111111111111 111111111111111F LAG{unknown}\x04\x04\x04\x04

At this point, try to input the string ('1' * 31 + 'F') as plaintext. What will be the each block?

# 1. Our plaintext ('1'*31 + 'F') + 'FLAG{unknown}'
111111111111111111111111111111FFLAG{unknown}

# 2. Separate it.
1111111111111111 111111111111111F FLAG{unknown}\x03\x03\x03

As above, the middle block ('111111111111111F') will be the same as the previous one.
It means that our first input ('1' * 31) and the second input ('1' * 31 + 'F') will lead the script to generate the same middle block.

Next we compare the input ('1' * 30) and the input ('1' * 30 + 'FL'). The middle block will be such the following after separating.

# Our plaintext ('1'*30) + 'FLAG{unknown}'
1111111111111111 11111111111111FL AG{unknown}\x05\x05\x05\x05\x05

# Our plaintext ('1'*30 + 'FL') + 'FLAG{unknown}'
1111111111111111 11111111111111FL FLAG{unknown}\x03\x03\x03

Representing the above in a Python script would look like this:

# Extract the middle block by '[16:32]'.
print(encrypt(b'1'*31)[16:32] == encrypt(b'1'*31 + b'F')[16:32])
# True

print(encrypt(b'1'*30)[16:32] == encrypt(b'1'*30 + b'FL')[16:32]
# True

2. Brute Force

Using the above mechanism, we can find the FLAG by bruteforcing characters while decreasing the number of '1' ('1'*31, '1'*30, '1'*29, …).
Comparing the first input ('1' * N) and the second input ('1' * N + 'some characters'), we will be able to find the FLAG.
Below is the Python script for doing that.

def bruteforce():
	flag = ''
  total = 32 - 1
  chars = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789_-~!?#%&@{}'

  while True:
		payload = '1' * (total - len(flag))
    ciphertext_1 = encrypt(payload.encode())

    for c in chars:
		  ciphertext_2 = encrypt((payload + flag + c).encode())
			# Comapare the middle blocks ([32:64]) of each encrypted text
	    if ciphertext_2[32:64] == ciphertext_1[32:64]:
		    flag += c
        print(flag)
        break

bruteforce()

Run the script and the output will be as below.

F
FL
FLA
FLAG
FLAG{
FLAG{h
FLAG{he
FLAG{hel
FLAG{hell
FLAG{hello
FLAG{hellow
FLAG{hellowo
FLAG{hellowor
FLAG{helloworl
FLAG{helloworld
FLAG{helloworld}

We could find the FLAG by bruteforcing plaintext without knowing the key.

References