Hello, following is a patchset providing an user-space interface to the kernel crypto API. It is based on the older, BSD-compatible, implementation, but the user-space interface is different. These are the major differences compared to the BSD-like interface: * The API supports key storage and management inside the kernel. An application can thus ask the kernel to generate a key; the key is then referenced via an integer identifier, and the application can be prevented from accessing the raw key data. Such a key can, if so configured, still be wrapped for key transport to the recipient of the message, and unwrapped by the recipient. The kernel key storage does not span system reboots, but applications can also wrap the keys for persistent storage, receiving an encrypted blob that does not reveal the raw key data, but can be later loaded back into the kernel. * More algorithms and mechanisms are supported by the API, including public key algorithms (RSA/DSA encryption and signing, D-H key derivation, key wrapping). Motivations for the extensions: governments are asking for more security features in the operating systems they procure, which make user-space implementations impractical. A few examples: * Advanced crypto module for OSPP for Common Criteria requires OS services implementing several low-level crypto algorithms (e.g. AES, RSA). This requires the separation of crypto services from the consumer of those services. (The threat model is that apps tend to have more vulnerabilities than libraries and compromise of the app will lead to the ability to access key material.) An user-space library is not separated, options are a) root running daemon that does crypto, but this would be slow due to context switches, scheduler mismatching and all the IPC overhead and b) use crypto that is in the kernel. * FIPS-140-3 calls out for cryptographic functions to be non-debuggable (ptrace) meaning that you cannot get to the key material. The solution is the same as above. * GPOSPP requires auditing for crypto events (so does FIPS-140 level 2 cert). To do this you need any crypto to have CAP_AUDIT_WRITE permissions which means making everything that links to openssl, libgcrypt, or nss setuid root. Making firefox and 400 other applications setuid root is a non-starter. So, the solution is again to use crypto in the kernel where auditing needs no special permissions. Other advantages to having kernel crypto available to user space: * User space will be able to take advantage of kernel drivers for hardware crypto accelerators. * glibc, which in some configurations links to libfreebl3.so for hashes necessary for crypt(), will be able to use the kernel implementation; this means one less library to load and dynamically link for each such process. The code is derived from the original cryptodev-linux patch set; most of the new implementation was written by Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos <n.mavrogiannopoulos@xxxxxxxxx>. Attributions are included in the respective source files. The patches are not in a sequence that allows compilation after applying a subset, they were split into logical groups to ease reviewing instead. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-crypto" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
