> If you disagree, you're invited to take a look at End-To-End, find a side-channel leak and write an exploit for it. You could earn serious cold cash with that finding.
For one thing, the IDEA implementation seems to be incorrect. In IDEA, multiplication is defined as multiplication modulo 2^16 + 1, where 0 means 2^16 [3]. However, looking at the multiplication function:
https://code.google.com/p/end-to-end/source/browse/javascrip...
When x == 0 but y != 0, the result of the modular multiplication is always 0, when it should not be. The correct code would be (in glorious C syntax, everything unsigned and 32-bit):
if(x != 0) {
if(y != 0) {
return x*y % 65537; // result fits in 32 bits
}
else return 65537 - x; // or 1 - x mod 2^16
} else return 65537 - y; // or 1 - y mod 2^16
Of course, even if correct this code is still vulnerable to timing attacks (under contrived conditions) [1]. This can be worked around using a little bitwise magic:
t0 = 65537 - x;
t1 = 65537 - y;
t2 = x*y % 65537;
b0 = -(1 ^ ((x | -x) >> 31)); // 0xfff..ff if x == 0
b1 = -(1 ^ ((y | -y) >> 31)); // 0xfff..ff if y == 0
return ((t0&~b0&b1) | (t1&b0&~b1) | (t2&~b0&~b1) | (1&b0&b1))&0xFFFF;
Additionally, the modular inversion seems to be needlessly complicated by using Euclid's algorithm (and I'm not sure it's correct either: it seems not to respect the "0 means 2^16" rule). Use the usual a^(p-2) mod p inversion trick, using an optimal addition chain [2], to make it simpler, constant-time, and possibly faster.
None of this is Javascript's fault, for what it's worth. But I certainly don't expect Javascript to make it any easier to write correct code, much by the contrary.
EDIT: Fixed constant-time code.
[1] https://www.schneier.com/paper-side-channel2.pdf
[2] http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/achim/scrip...
[3] http://www.isiweb.ee.ethz.ch/papers/arch/xlai-mass-inspec-19...