Blowfish C code still chokes

[Sarad AV]

hello,

The C code for the blowfish encryption algorithm
posted in Mr.Schneier's site, acocording to Michael.B
still 'chokes' as it is not corrected even though the
bug report, mentions that it is a fatal bug.
The bug report is available at
http://www.schneier.com/blowfish-bug.txt 

His opinion is that the code  still 'chokes' in
http://www.schneier.com/code/bfsh-sch.zip 


Though Mr.Mike Morgan in the bug report attrbutes the
bug to "non-standard use of the 'union' construct", I
think it is automatic type cast form type signed char
to unsigned long,is responsible for this bug. 

Please see his comments below.

Regards,
Sarad A.V

Forwarded on request by Michael.B
---------------------------------

Also the bug IS a very serious security issue if you
read into the bug doc, making Blowfish a very easy
crackable cipher... and yes you are right every
responsible programmer should use test vectors etc., I
do, but how do I know someone else did if I can't
review the code and have no other means of testing,
for example with (proper - see below) test vectors? 

And... (you really did not read into the bug-doc)...
standard test vectors DO NOT SHOW the bug. Which is
why it is such an evil one, aside the extreme security
loss. 

150 products use Blowfish so far, as counterpane.org
states, and many of them don't have a verification
scheme at all. I recall a Secure Shell for example,
implementing Blowfish as an optional cipher to choose
from among others. Now with that (commercial) product
I would choose Blowfish never more since I can't
review the code or test with selected test vectors.
And this is the point. The bug thing coming directly
from Schneier does create a general distrust in
Blowfish for me.

now this is an ORIGINAL quote from the bug-describing
doc taking direct from schneier's website. 

next, please consider this ORIGINAL paste of the
ref-installation by schneier 

short InitializeBlowfish(char key[], short keybytes) 
{ 
   unsigned long  data; 

  ... //lots of code ommitted 

      j = 0; 
      for (i = 0; i < N + 2; ++i) { 
        data = 0x00000000; 
        for (k = 0; k < 4; ++k) { 
          data = (data << 8) | key[j]; //(my comment)
CHOKE! see above 

   ...
}

The discussion is available here

http://www.security-forums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21640&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=8



		
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