RE: [dm-devel] xts fuzz testing and lack of ciphertext stealing support

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Monday, August 12, 2019 12:24 AM
> To: Pascal Van Leeuwen <pvanleeuwen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Horia Geanta <horia.geanta@xxxxxxx>; Herbert Xu <herbert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Milan Broz
> <gmazyland@xxxxxxxxx>; dm-devel@xxxxxxxxxx; linux-crypto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [dm-devel] xts fuzz testing and lack of ciphertext stealing support
> 
> On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 at 00:15, Pascal Van Leeuwen
> <pvanleeuwen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2019 6:40 AM
> > > To: Pascal Van Leeuwen <pvanleeuwen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: Horia Geanta <horia.geanta@xxxxxxx>; Herbert Xu <herbert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Milan
> Broz
> > > <gmazyland@xxxxxxxxx>; dm-devel@xxxxxxxxxx; linux-crypto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Subject: Re: [dm-devel] xts fuzz testing and lack of ciphertext stealing support
> > >
> > > On Fri, 9 Aug 2019 at 23:57, Pascal Van Leeuwen
> > > <pvanleeuwen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > > From: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > > Sent: Friday, August 9, 2019 7:49 PM
> > > > > To: Horia Geanta <horia.geanta@xxxxxxx>
> > > > > Cc: Herbert Xu <herbert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Pascal Van Leeuwen
> > > > > <pvanleeuwen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Milan Broz <gmazyland@xxxxxxxxx>; dm-devel@xxxxxxxxxx;
> > > linux-
> > > > > crypto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > > > Subject: Re: [dm-devel] xts fuzz testing and lack of ciphertext stealing support
> > > > >
> > > > > On Fri, 9 Aug 2019 at 10:44, Horia Geanta <horia.geanta@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On 8/9/2019 9:45 AM, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> > > > > > > On Fri, 9 Aug 2019 at 05:48, Herbert Xu <herbert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >> On Thu, Aug 08, 2019 at 06:01:49PM +0000, Horia Geanta wrote:
> > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > >>> -- >8 --
> > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > >>> Subject: [PATCH] crypto: testmgr - Add additional AES-XTS vectors for covering
> > > > > > >>>  CTS (part II)
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >> Patchwork doesn't like it when you do this and it'll discard
> > > > > > >> your patch.  To make it into patchwork you need to put the new
> > > > > > >> Subject in the email headers.
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > IMO, pretending that your XTS implementation is compliant by only
> > > > > > I've never said that.
> > > > > > Some parts are compliant, some are not.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > providing test vectors with the last 8 bytes of IV cleared is not the
> > > > > > > right fix for this issue. If you want to be compliant, you will need
> > > > > > It's not a fix.
> > > > > > It's adding test vectors which are not provided in the P1619 standard,
> > > > > > where "data unit sequence number" is at most 5B.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Indeed. But I would prefer not to limit ourselves to 5 bytes of sector
> > > > > numbers in the test vectors. However, we should obviously not add test
> > > > > vectors that are known to cause breakages on hardware that works fine
> > > > > in practice.
> > > > >
> > > > Well, obviously, the full 16 byte sector number vectors fail on existing
> > > > CAAM hardware, which I do assume to work fine in practice. And you know
> > > > I'm not in favor of building all kinds of workarounds into the drivers.
> > > >
> > > > Fact is, we know there are no current users that need more than 64 bits
> > > > of IV. Fact is also that having 64 bits of IV in the vectors is already
> > > > an improvement over the 40 bits in the original vectors. And unlike CTS,
> > > > I am not aware of any real use case for more than 64 bits.
> > > > Finally, another fact is that limiting the *vectors* to 64 bits of IV
> > > > does not prohibit anyone from *using* a full 128 bit IV on an
> > > > implementation that *does* support this. I would think most users of
> > > > XTS, like dmcrypt, would allow you to specify the cra_drivername
> > > > explictly anyway, so just don't select legacy CAAM if you need that.
> > > > (heck, if it would be reading and writing its own data, and not need
> > > > compatibility with other implementations, it wouldn't even matter)
> > > >
> > > > So yes, the specs are quite clear on the sector number being a full
> > > > 128 bits. But that doesn't prevent us from specifying that the
> > > > crypto API implementation currently only supports 64 bits, with the
> > > > remaining bits being forced to 0. We can always revisit that when
> > > > an actual use case for more than 64 bits arises ...
> > > >
> > >
> > > You have got it completely backwards:
> > >
> > > CTS has never worked in any kernel implementation, so regardless of
> > > what the spec says, supporting it in the kernel is not a high priority
> > > issue whichever way you put it.
> > >
> > I never said it was a high priority, I merely pointed out it's not spec
> > compliant. Apparently, you feel that that's only important insofar that
> > it matches current kernel use cases?
> >
> > Anyway, as far as I understand, there are no users that need more than
> > 64 bits of IV in the kernel (i.e. dmcrypt uses only 64 bits), so I see
> > no fundamental difference with CTS except that most(?) implementations
> > possibly already "accidentally" (since unverified!) did it correctly.
> >
> 
> Well, as Milan points out, dm-crypt may use the upper bits as well,
> but the point I was making was about the userland interface. If you
> care about spec compliance for the sake of it, I don't understand why
> you dismiss a broken userland->kernel interface that silently fails
> and corrupts your data as something we should just live with, and just
> assume nobody will ever be silly enough to use it the way the spec
> describes it, and use all the available IV bits.
> 
Pfff ... taking my words waaay out of context ...

I believe I agreed that such a thing should not be silent.
And my argument was never that everyone should support everything, just
that a driver should be able to expose it's CTS capability if available.
If you don't support CTS, just return -EINVAL on non-16 byte multiples,
but don't FORCE a driver that DOES support it to do so for no reason.

> > Not that I have any interest in restricting the IV size: "my" hardware
> > handles full 128 bit IV's just fine. So why do I even bother ... :-)
> >
> > > Now is the first time anyone has asked
> > > for it in 12 years, and only because someone spotted a deviation
> > > between a h/w and a s/w implementation, not because anyone tried to
> > > use it and failed. (Note that passing anything other than a multiple
> > > of the block size will cause an error rather than fail silently)
> > >
> > Yes, failing silently is not such a good idea, I think we agree on that.
> > Although we also need  to keep in mind that that's exactly what the CAAM
> > driver has been doing all those years, and, before my vectors, nobody
> > noticed or cared.
> 
> True. But now that the cat is out of the bag, we have an obligation to
> our users to ensure that a known problem does not corrupt their data.
> 
Again, it should indeed not fail silently. Returning an error should
prevent users from continuing to actually use it, as just building or
mounting the filesystem will already fail. 

> > Without my involvement, this would have probably gone
> > unnoticed for many years to come (so I feel some responsibility ;-).
> >
> > > Truncated IVs are a huge issue, since we already expose the correct
> > > API via AF_ALG (without any restrictions on how many of the IV bits
> > > are populated), and apparently, if your AF_ALG request for xts(aes)
> > > happens to be fulfilled by the CAAM driver and your implementation
> > > uses more than 64 bits for the IV, the top bits get truncated silently
> > > and your data might get eaten.
> > >
> > Apparently, not such a "huge" issue at all, see previous remark.
> >
> > As a precaution, the CAAM driver could return -EINVAL if the upper IV
> > bytes are non-zero.
> 
> Then we'd still have two implementations that behave differently, and
> this is not how abstractions work. If a driver implements xts(aes),
> then it should produce the same output (and return value) for every
> input.
> 
Well, that's where I will continue to disagree with you. 

I'm allergic to dogma, I like bending the rules a little. I believe in
flexibility and providing options, where possible and within reason.
I don't see why crypto drivers can't limit their functionality, so long
as these limitations are clear. I've argued this many times before, but
most HW crypto drivers are NOT selected by default, they are selected
EXPLICITLY (you  can control this by keeping the priority relatively low)
by the user through some config file or commandline switch.
You can choose  NOT to use them for a certain task (say dmcrypt or ipsec)
if they have  known issues for that use case. Vendors can document this. 
That's what we do all the time, document use cases and limitations for
our hardware.

But obviously, they should not fail silently, but provide meaningful
error responses instead, so it's immediately clear they don't work.

> > But then testmgr would have to do less strict error
> > return code checking so we don't force this upon drivers that CAN do it.
> >
> > Implementing a full SW fallback for that in the driver just seems like
> > massive overkill, as you normally specify the driver for dmcrypt explictly
> > anyway (or at least, you can do that if the default fails).
> >
> 
> How would you find out if the default fails? Either it corrupts your
> data, or it fails with an error that is specific to CAAM, and so we
> would have to update the dm-crypt code to deal with en/decryption
> failures that can only occur in this particular case. 
>
It would just return some error and dmcrypt would fail on that, as
it would have to do on any returned error code anyway.
Then you just configure dmcrypt to use some other driver for xts(aes).
It should not need to be more complex than that.

> This is
> *exactly* the thing I argued against before, when we discussed zero
> length inputs: the reason we want the workaround in the driver is
> because it is contained, and its peculiarities don't leak into other
> layers.
> 
And I still very fundamentally disagree with you on that ... ;-)

> > I don't like the idea of HW drivers doing SW fallbacks because it clouds
> > the whole picture of what is actually done by a certain HW device.
> >
> 
> Well, the reality is that we OS guys get to clean up after the h/w
> guys all the time. 
> I agree that explicit failure is better than silent
> corruption, but that still means there are corner cases where things
> just don't work. 
>
Corner cases relevant to specific use cases that you could document.
Many of these h/w drivers are only relevant to embedded systems, which
usually come with large stacks of documentation on how to use them.
It's not a problem unless it is the default selection and there is no
override. You could do stricter checks on implementations with the
highest priority that may end up becoming the default. Just a thought.

> So the only acceptable way to me is to fix this with
> a s/w workaround, and as I already pointed out, this could simply be
> the xts template wrapped around the accelerated ECB implementation
> exposed by the driver.
> 
You could do that. It's just no fun writing and maintaining all that 
code that you fundamentally don't want to be executed in the first
place. It seems like a huge waste of effort.
Also, for every XTS TFM, you always need the software implementation
on standby, consuming memory, with the key configured and the key 
scheduler  likely executed etc., just in case the upper 8 iv bytes are
nonzero. Which probably never happens anyway.

> 
> > > In my experience, users tend to care more about the latter than the former.
> > >
> > >
> > > > > > > to provide a s/w fallback for these cases.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > Yes, the plan is to:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > -add 16B IV support for caam versions supporting it - caam Era 9+,
> > > > > > currently deployed in lx2160a and ls108a
> > > > > >
> > > > > > -remove current 8B IV support and add s/w fallback for affected caam versions
> > > > > > I'd assume this could be done dynamically, i.e. depending on IV provided
> > > > > > in the crypto request to use either the caam engine or s/w fallback.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Yes. If the IV received from the caller has bytes 8..15 cleared, you
> > > > > use the limited XTS h/w implementation, otherwise you fall back to
> > > > > xts(ecb-aes-caam..).
> > > >
> > > > Regards,
> > > > Pascal van Leeuwen
> > > > Silicon IP Architect, Multi-Protocol Engines @ Verimatrix
> > > > www.insidesecure.com
> > > >
> >
> > Regards,
> > Pascal van Leeuwen
> > Silicon IP Architect, Multi-Protocol Engines @ Verimatrix
> > www.insidesecure.com
> >

Regards,
Pascal van Leeuwen
Silicon IP Architect, Multi-Protocol Engines @ Verimatrix
www.insidesecure.com




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