The type names 'val_foo' used in testcrypt.h work on a system where a
further underscore suffix is treated as a qualifier indicating
something about how the C version of the API represents that type.
(For example, plain 'val_string' means a strbuf, but if I write
'val_string_asciz' or 'val_string_ptrlen' in testcrypt.h it will cause
the wrapper for that function to pass a char * or a ptrlen derived
from that strbuf.)
But I forgot about this when I named the type val_ssh2_cipher (and
ditto ssh1), with the effect that the testcrypt system has considered
them all along to really be called 'ssh2' and 'ssh1', and the 'cipher'
to be some irrelevant API-adaptor suffix.
This hasn't caused a bug because I didn't have any other type called
val_ssh2_something. But it was a latent one. Now renamed sensibly!
This enables me to control where testcrypt both reads its input and
writes its output. That in turn makes it convenient to run testcrypt
itself in a separate Unix terminal window from its client Python, by
making two named pipe files (say, 'i' and 'o'), running the client
with PUTTY_TESTCRYPT="cat o & cat > i" in its environment, and in
another window, running 'testcrypt -o o i'.
And that in turn makes it easy to attach gdb to testcrypt, so I can
easily debug its handling of whatever request the client sent.
This allows me to remove another diagnostic main() that I just found
lurking at the bottom of sshdes.c, which was there to allow manual
untangling of XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 strings when debugging X forwarding.
Now you can ask the same kind of question at the interactive Python
prompt, without having to manually compile anything. For example, the
query you might previously have asked by building the sshdes test
program and running
$ ./sshdes 090a0b0c0d0e0f10 0123456789abcd
decrypt(090a0b0c0d0e0f10,0123456789abcd) = ab53fd65ae7f4ec3
encrypt(090a0b0c0d0e0f10,0123456789abcd) = 7065d20441f5abe3
you can now run using the standard testcrypt (bearing in mind that the
actual library function takes the key argument first):
$ python -i test/testcrypt.py
>>> from binascii import hexlify as H, unhexlify as U
>>> H(des_decrypt_xdmauth(U('0123456789abcd'),U('090a0b0c0d0e0f10')))
'ab53fd65ae7f4ec3'
>>> H(des_encrypt_xdmauth(U('0123456789abcd'),U('090a0b0c0d0e0f10')))
'7065d20441f5abe3'
This is the commit that f3295e0fb _should_ have been. Yesterday I just
added some typedefs so that I didn't have to wear out my fingers
typing 'struct' in new code, but what I ought to have done is to move
all the typedefs into defs.h with the rest, and then go through
cleaning up the legacy 'struct's all through the existing code.
But I was mostly trying to concentrate on getting the test suite
finished, so I just did the minimum. Now it's time to come back and do
it better.
I've written a new standalone test program which incorporates all of
PuTTY's crypto code, including the mp_int and low-level elliptic curve
layers but also going all the way up to the implementations of the
MAC, hash, cipher, public key and kex abstractions.
The test program itself, 'testcrypt', speaks a simple line-oriented
protocol on standard I/O in which you write the name of a function
call followed by some inputs, and it gives you back a list of outputs
preceded by a line telling you how many there are. Dynamically
allocated objects are assigned string ids in the protocol, and there's
a 'free' function that tells testcrypt when it can dispose of one.
It's possible to speak that protocol by hand, but cumbersome. I've
also provided a Python module that wraps it, by running testcrypt as a
persistent subprocess and gatewaying all the function calls into
things that look reasonably natural to call from Python. The Python
module and testcrypt.c both read a carefully formatted header file
testcrypt.h which contains the name and signature of every exported
function, so it costs minimal effort to expose a given function
through this test API. In a few cases it's necessary to write a
wrapper in testcrypt.c that makes the function look more friendly, but
mostly you don't even need that. (Though that is one of the
motivations between a lot of API cleanups I've done recently!)
I considered doing Python integration in the more obvious way, by
linking parts of the PuTTY code directly into a native-code .so Python
module. I decided against it because this way is more flexible: I can
run the testcrypt program on its own, or compile it in a way that
Python wouldn't play nicely with (I bet compiling just that .so with
Leak Sanitiser wouldn't do what you wanted when Python loaded it!), or
attach a debugger to it. I can even recompile testcrypt for a
different CPU architecture (32- vs 64-bit, or even running it on a
different machine over ssh or under emulation) and still layer the
nice API on top of that via the local Python interpreter. All I need
is a bidirectional data channel.
