fix(tpm): preserve signature algorithm metadata

[noah-ing]

What

Preserve the parsed TPMT_SIGNATURE scheme and digest when cA2A delegates TPM
report verification to Agent Manifest. The report path now passes
ParsedSignature instead of stripping it to bare signature bytes.

The lower-level compatibility API now distinguishes its two accepted forms
explicitly: ParsedSignature carries envelope metadata, while bytes means the
historical bare-signature form. Bare bytes are tagged as ECDSA/SHA-256 or
RSASSA/SHA-256 according to the AK public-key type before delegation, rather
than being classified from their arbitrary first two bytes.

The regression coverage exercises both direct APIs and the complete
serialize_channel_offer -> parse_channel_offer -> verify_offer -> tpm_verifier
path.

Why

cA2A already parsed sig_alg and hash_alg, but verify_tpm_report() passed
only parsed.signature onward. Agent Manifest therefore applied its legacy
bare-signature defaults instead of the operation declared by the TPM envelope.
For RSA reports, that produced the following inconsistent outcomes on current
main:

Vector	Current main	This change
genuine RSAPSS/SHA-384	rejected	accepted
RSASSA/SHA-256 falsely declared RSAPSS	accepted	rejected
RSASSA/SHA-256 falsely declared SHA-384	accepted	rejected

The signature still had to be cryptographically valid under the trusted AK, so
this was not arbitrary-signature acceptance. It was algorithm confusion: the
reported scheme/digest and the operation actually verified could disagree.

Review also exposed a separate ambiguity in the legacy lower-level bytes
form. A valid 256-byte RSASSA/SHA-256 signature can begin 00 16; treating
those arbitrary bytes as a possible marshalled envelope mistakes 0x0016 for
TPM_ALG_RSAPSS and rejects valid evidence while parsing. The frozen synthetic
regression fixture contains such a genuine signature and no private key. cA2A
now makes its documented bare-byte interpretation explicit before delegation.

Agent Manifest 0.11.1 already supports ParsedSignature, and cA2A's current
dependency floor is already agent-manifest>=0.11.1, so no dependency change
is needed. This is a follow-up on the TPM signature-parser consolidation noted
in #77; it does not close #77's separate Azure certificate-chain limitation.

Security impact

This changes a security-critical offline attestation path. The signature scheme
and digest declared in TPMT_SIGNATURE now select the verification operation,
so relabelling either field without producing a matching signature fails.

The algorithm fields are not themselves inside the AK-signed TPMS_ATTEST
bytes. This change establishes consistency between those envelope declarations
and the cryptographic operation; it does not add an algorithm-strength policy.
It does not alter AK-chain trust, quote type/magic checks, PCR appraisal,
qualifying-data binding, key residency, or nonce policy.

The bare-byte prefix collision was a fail-closed rejection of valid evidence,
not a bypass or forged-evidence acceptance. A caller holding a marshalled
TPMT_SIGNATURE must parse it first or use the report API; bytes at the cA2A
lower-level boundary now unambiguously means a legacy bare signature.

The new non-default algorithm vectors are self-consistent synthetic RSA/AK
fixtures. The previously documented live Azure vTPM observation remains
RSASSA/SHA-256; this PR does not claim a live hardware RSAPSS/SHA-384 run.

Test plan

• pytest tests/unit/ tests/conformance/ -v --tb=short --cov=src — 545
  passed, 2 pre-existing hardware-fixture skips, 90.24% coverage
• Exact published dependency floor (agent-manifest==0.11.1) — 48 focused
  TPM tests passed, including the frozen 00 16 bare-RSA vector
• ruff check src/ tests/
• ruff format --check src/ tests/
• mypy src/ca2a_runtime/ src/ca2a_verify/ — 44 source files
• bandit -r src/ -c pyproject.toml
• pip-audit — no known dependency vulnerabilities; local unpublished
  project skipped as expected
• Wheel/sdist build, strict Twine validation, forbidden-content checks, and
  fresh Python 3.12 wheel and sdist install/import/CLI smokes
• MkDocs build using the repository's deployment assembly. Strict mode is
  not claimed: the existing project-wide config emits unrelated
  SPONSORS.md/LICENSE warnings.
• Manual hardware test — not performed for the new PSS/SHA-384 case; the
  synthetic-vs-live boundary is documented above

DCO sign-off

• I certify that I wrote or have the right to submit this contribution, and
  I agree to the Developer Certificate of Origin
  (https://developercertificate.org/).

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[codecov-commenter]

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Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 92.30769% with 1 line in your changes missing coverage. Please review.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
src/ca2a_verify/tpm.py	92.30%	1 Missing ⚠️

📢 Thoughts on this report? Let us know!

[devdiv07]

Ran this against f82cea3 rather than just reading the diff. On the frozen synthetic RSASSA/SHA-256 vector I had:

Path	Result
verify_tpm_report(...) with the full TPMT_SIGNATURE	PASS
verify_tpm_quote(..., ParsedSignature)	PASS
verify_tpm_quote(..., bare RSA bytes)	FAIL

The parsed-signature change in this PR resolves the issue for the report path; what remains is the legacy bytes form.

The residual I found is in the new compatibility wording rather than the report-path change.

attestation.md now says:

verify_tpm_quote is the lower-level compatibility form taking an attest blob plus either parsed signature metadata or a legacy bare signature; a bare RSA signature retains the RSASSA/SHA-256 defaults.

I have a deterministic counterexample to that last part. A truthful TPMT_SIGNATURE declaring sig_alg=0x0014 / hash_alg=0x000b extracts to a valid 256-byte RSASSA/SHA-256 signature whose first two bytes happen to be 00 16.

0x0016 is TPM_ALG_RSAPSS, so when those already-bare bytes are passed to agent_manifest.verify_tpm_quote, the bytes-compatibility branch interprets them as a marshalled TPMT_SIGNATURE and parses them again:

TpmVerificationError: TPMT_SIGNATURE truncated inside the RSA signature

The legacy RSASSA/SHA-256 default is therefore never reached for this input. The signature itself verifies directly against the AK under PKCS#1 v1.5 / SHA-256.

This case is already inside the documented RSASSA/SHA-256 profile, so it is separate from the PSS/SHA-384 behaviour this PR is adding.

I also checked the tests. The existing bare-byte verify_tpm_quote cases use ECDSA DER signatures, which begin 0x30 and so cannot reach that branch, while the new lower-level RSA case passes a ParsedSignature. I could not find coverage for the specific condition: a valid bare RSA signature under RSASSA/SHA-256 whose first two bytes are 00 16, passed through the legacy bytes API.

I have not tried to prescribe the resolution here; the point I wanted to surface is that the unconditional bare-signature compatibility statement has at least this counterexample.

I have the frozen vector if it is useful as a regression: synthetic, offline-replayable, and containing no private key.

Scope-wise, this is a fail-closed rejection of valid evidence, not a bypass or forged-evidence acceptance.

[noah-ing]

Thank you — this is a real counterexample, and I reproduced the same dispatch
failure independently against f82cea3:

• valid 256-byte RSASSA/SHA-256 signature beginning 00 16
• bare bytes passed directly to the released shared verifier: rejected while
  being parsed as a truncated TPMT_SIGNATURE
• the same signature wrapped as ParsedSignature(0x0014, 0x000b, ...): accepted

I pushed 1b2ec1e to address it at cA2A's compatibility boundary. The
lower-level cA2A API now makes its documented distinction explicit:

• bytes is a legacy bare signature and is tagged ECDSA/SHA-256 or
  RSASSA/SHA-256 according to the AK public-key type before delegation;
• ParsedSignature retains and applies its declared scheme and digest; and
• callers holding a marshalled TPMT_SIGNATURE must parse it first (or use the
  report API).

That avoids a parse-failure fallback and removes the prefix heuristic from this
API without weakening the report-path algorithm binding. I also replaced the
unconditional compatibility wording and added a frozen, private-key-free
synthetic regression vector for the exact 00 16 case.

Verification after the change:

• 545 passed, 2 pre-existing hardware-fixture skips, 90.24% coverage
• 48 focused TPM tests passed at the published agent-manifest==0.11.1 floor
• Ruff, formatting, mypy, Bandit, pip-audit, wheel/sdist/Twine and fresh-install
  smokes passed

Thanks for running the code and isolating the residual to the legacy form. The
scope remains as you characterized it: valid-evidence rejection, not forged-
evidence acceptance.

[devdiv07]

@noah-ing Re-ran my frozen vector against 1b2ec1e — the legacy bytes path now passes, and the upstream second parse count is zero. The cA2A boundary now passes a typed ParsedSignature(0x0014, 0x000b, ...) with the original signature bytes unchanged, so the prefix no longer determines structure. Thanks for reproducing it and for adding the regression fixture.

[carloshvp]

Reviewed exact head 1b2ec1eb7d1da5b4ba201194d1952bcf409d16cf against the published dependency floor agent-manifest==0.11.1.

The report path retains ParsedSignature metadata, and the lower-level bare-byte path uses the AK key type rather than a signature-prefix heuristic. The frozen 00 16 RSA regression passes. An independent 36-case signed wire-level matrix covering RSASSA/RSAPSS, SHA-256/384/512, and relabelled scheme/digest combinations accepted only matching declarations.

Validation: unit/conformance suite 545 passed, 2 skipped. The skips are hardware-fixture tests; these results use synthetic signatures and do not claim new hardware validation. No blocking findings. Substantive CI is green; the remaining failure is the maintainer-approval gate.

[imran-siddique]

Reviewed preservation and enforcement of parsed TPM signature scheme and digest metadata, including legacy bare-signature handling and the fixed RSA prefix fixture. All 58 focused TPM tests pass locally; restoring the previous verifier produces seven failures covering the digest/scheme checks and reference-wire paths.

[imran-siddique]

Reviewed preservation and enforcement of parsed TPM signature scheme and digest metadata, including legacy bare-signature handling and the fixed RSA prefix fixture. All 58 focused TPM tests pass locally; restoring the previous verifier produces seven failures covering the digest/scheme checks and reference-wire paths.