The following command works even though I really don’t think I should have permission to the key file:
$ openssl aes-256-cbc -d -pbkdf2 -in etc_backup.tar.xz.enc -out etc_backup.tar.xz -k /etc/ssl/private/etcBackup.key
I’m unable to even ascertain the existence of the key file under my normal user. I’m a member of only two groups, my own group and vboxusers.
The permissions leading up to that file:
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4010 Jul 31 08:01 etc
...
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 206 Jul 14 23:52 ssl
...
drwx------ 1 root root 26 Jul 31 14:07 private
...
-rw------- 1 root root 256 Jul 31 14:07 etcBackup.key
OpenSSL isn’t setuid:
> ls -la $(which openssl)
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1004768 Jul 14 23:52 /usr/bin/openssl
There don’t appear to be any ACLs related to that key file:
> sudo getfacl /etc/ssl/private/etcBackup.key
[sudo] password for root:
getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: etc/ssl/private/etcBackup.key
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rw-
group::---
other::---
> sudo lsattr /etc/ssl/private/etcBackup.key
---------------------- /etc/ssl/private/etcBackup.key
Finally, it’s not just the case that the original file was encrypted with an empty file:
> openssl aes-256-cbc -d -pbkdf2 -in etc_backup.tar.xz.enc -out etc_backup.tar.xz -k /etc/ssl/private/abc.key
bad decrypt
4047F634B67F0000:error:1C800064:Provider routines:ossl_cipher_unpadblock:bad decrypt:providers/implementations/ciphers/ciphercommon_block.c:124
Does anyone know what I’ve missed here?
On my machine at least man openssl shows that -k is for specifying the password you want to derive the key from, so in that case I think you are literally using the string /etc/ssl/private/etcBackup.key as the password. I think the flag you want is -kfile.
You can verify this by running the command in strace and seeing that there is no openat call for the file passed to -k.
Edit: metiulekm@sh.itjust.works beat me to it while I was writing out my answer :)
