Use of a potentially broken or risky cryptographic algorithm¶

ID: java/potentially-weak-cryptographic-algorithm
Kind: path-problem
Security severity: 7.5
Severity: warning
Precision: medium
Tags:
   - security
   - external/cwe/cwe-327
   - external/cwe/cwe-328
Query suites:
   - java-security-extended.qls
   - java-security-and-quality.qls

Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository

Using broken or weak cryptographic algorithms may compromise security guarantees such as confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity.

Many cryptographic algorithms are known to be weak or flawed. The security guarantees of a system often rely on the underlying cryptography, so using a weak algorithm can have severe consequences. For example:

• If a weak encryption algorithm is used, an attacker may be able to decrypt sensitive data.

• If a weak hashing algorithm is used to protect data integrity, an attacker may be able to craft a malicious input that has the same hash as a benign one.

• If a weak algorithm is used for digital signatures, an attacker may be able to forge signatures and impersonate legitimate users.

// BAD: DES is a weak algorithm 
Cipher des = Cipher.getInstance("DES");
cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, secretKeySpec);

byte[] encrypted = cipher.doFinal(input.getBytes("UTF-8"));

// ...

// GOOD: AES is a strong algorithm
Cipher aes = Cipher.getInstance("AES");

// ...