Deno's AES GCM authentication tags are not verified
This affects AES-256-GCM and AES-128-GCM in Deno, introduced by commit 0d1beed. Specifically, the authentication tag is not being validated. This means tampered ciphertexts or incorrect keys might not be detected, which breaks the guarantees expected from AES-GCM. Older versions of Deno correctly threw errors in such cases, as does Node.js. Without authentication tag verification, AES-GCM degrades to essentially CTR mode, removing integrity protection. Authenticated data set with set_aad is also …