CVE-2026-95105: CWE-649 Reliance on Obfuscation or Encryption of Security-Relevant Inputs without Integrity Checking in danielberkompas cloak

The vulnerability arises because cloak's AES-256 CTR mode encryption stores the key tag, IV, and ciphertext without any integrity verification such as a MAC. The decrypt function only verifies the key tag and minimum length before returning plaintext. Since CTR mode is a stream cipher, an attacker who can write to the encrypted store (e.g., via SQL injection or compromised replica) and who knows or can guess the plaintext can flip bits in the ciphertext to produce chosen plaintext values of the same length. This manipulation is undetected by the application, leading to potential unauthorized data modification.

An attacker with write access to the encrypted ciphertext can alter stored encrypted data to arbitrary values of the same length without detection. This undermines data integrity and can lead to unauthorized data manipulation or bypass of security controls relying on the encrypted data. The vulnerability does not require privileges beyond write access to the ciphertext and no user interaction is needed. It affects confidentiality and integrity of the encrypted data.

Patch status is not yet confirmed — check the vendor advisory for current remediation guidance. Until an official fix is available, applications using cloak should avoid relying solely on AES-CTR encryption without integrity checks for security-relevant inputs. Implementing authenticated encryption (e.g., AES-GCM) or adding a message authentication code (MAC) to verify ciphertext integrity before decryption is recommended to prevent bit-flipping attacks.