ParaToken Manual Review Findings

PTN-01M: Insecure Elliptic Curve Recovery Mechanism

Description:

The ecrecover function is a low-level cryptographic function that should be utilized after appropriate sanitizations have been enforced on its arguments, namely on the s and v values. This is due to the inherent trait of the curve to be symmetrical on the x-axis and thus permitting signatures to be replayed with the same x value (r) but a different y value (s).

Example:

Copy
104address signatory = ecrecover(digest, v, r, s);

Recommendation:

We advise them to be sanitized by ensuring that v is equal to either 27 or 28 (v ∈ {27, 28}) and to ensure that s is existent in the lower half order of the elliptic curve (0 < s < secp256k1n ÷ 2 + 1) by ensuring it is less than 0x7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF5D576E7357A4501DDFE92F46681B20A1. A reference implementation of those checks can be observed in the ECDSA library of OpenZeppelin and the rationale behind those restrictions exists within Appendix F of the Yellow Paper.

Alleviation:

The Parabola team opted not to apply a remediation for this finding in the current iteration of the codebase.