Date:   Wed, 5 Oct 2016 14:11:57 -0700
From:   Michael Halcrow <mhalcrow@...gle.com>
To:     Richard Weinberger <richard@....at>
Cc:     David Gstir <david@...ma-star.at>,
        linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org, linux-f2fs-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net,
        Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>, jaegeuk@...nel.org,
        Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...gle.com>,
        Anand Jain <anand.jain@...cle.com>,
        Tyler Hicks <tyhicks@...onical.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] fscrypto: make XTS tweak initialization
 endian-independent

On Wed, Oct 05, 2016 at 08:44:09PM +0200, Richard Weinberger wrote:
> Michael,
> 
> On 05.10.2016 20:23, Michael Halcrow wrote:
> >> Eric,
> >>
> >>> On 04.10.2016, at 18:38, Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...gle.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Oct 04, 2016 at 10:46:54AM +0200, Richard Weinberger wrote:
> >>>>> Also, currently this code *is* only supposed to be used for XTS.
> >>>>> There's a bug where a specially crafted filesystem can cause
> >>>>> this code path to be entered with CTS, but I have a patch
> >>>>> pending in the ext4 tree to fix that.
> >>>>
> >>>> David and I are currently working on UBIFS encryption and we have
> >>>> to support other cipher modes than XTS. So, keeping fscrypto as
> >>>> generic as possible would be nice. :-)
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> The problem was that the kernel supported reading a file whose
> >>> contents was encrypted with CTS, which is only supposed to be used
> >>> for filenames.  This was inconsistent with
> >>> FS_IOC_SET_ENCRYPTION_POLICY which currently only allows XTS for
> >>> contents and CTS for filenames.  So in other words I wanted to
> >>> eliminate a strange scenario that was not intended to happen and
> >>> was almost certainly never tested.
> >>>
> >>> Either way, new modes can still be added if there is a good reason
> >>> to do so.  What new encryption modes are you thinking of adding,
> >>> would they be for contents or for filenames, and are you thinking
> >>> they would be offered by all filesystems (ext4 and f2fs too)?
> >>
> >> We currently have one case where our embedded platform is only able
> >> to do AES-CBC in hardware, not AES-XTS. So switching to AES-CBC for
> >> file contents would yield far better performance while still being
> >> "secure enough".
> > 
> > Great to see more interest in file system encryption.  A few thoughts.
> > 
> > I'm concerned about the proliferation of storage encryption code in
> > the kernel.  Of course, I'm perhaps the worst instigator.  However
> > what's happening now is that we have several file systems that are
> > proposing their own encryption, as well as several attempts at support
> > for hardware encryption.
> > 
> > High-performance random access read/write block storage encryption
> > with authentication is hard to get right.  The way I see it, the ideal
> > solution would have these properties:
> > 
> >  * The actual cryptographic transform happens in as few places as
> >    possible -- preferably one place in software, with a sensible
> >    vendor-neutral API for defering to hardware.
> > 
> >  * All blocks in the file system, including both file contents and
> >    file system metadata, are cryptographically protected.
> > 
> >  * Encryption is authenticated and has versioning support to enforce
> >    consistency and defend against rollback.
> > 
> >  * File systems can select which keys protect which blocks.
> > 
> >  * Authentication of all storage chains back to Secure Boot.
> > 
> > To solve all of these simultaneously, it looks like we'll want to
> > consider changes to the kernel block API:
> 
> Not all filesystems use the block layer, hint: UBIFS.
> 
> > From here, we can delegate to dm-crypt to perform the block
> > transformation using the key in the bio.  Or we can defer to the block
> > storage driver to provision the key into the hardware encryption
> > element and tag requests to use that key.
> > 
> > This promises to get a big chunk of the file contents encryption logic
> > out of the file system layer.
> > 
> > If the file system doesn't provide a bi_crypt_ctx, then dm-crypt can
> > use the default key, which would be shared among all tenants of the
> > system.  That shared key can potentially be further protected by the
> > distro by leveraging a secure element like a TPM.
> 
> No dm-crypt available in MTD land.
> 
> > For user-specific file contents -- say, what's in the user's home
> > directory -- then that can be protected with a key that's only made
> > available after the user logs in (providing their credentials).  Other
> > tenants on the same device who can get at the shared key might still
> > get information like how many files other users have or what the
> > directory structure is, but at least they can't read the contents of
> > other users' files.  Meanwhile, the volume is comprehensively
> > protected against the "left in a taxi" scenario.
> > 
> >> Generally speaking though, it would be great to have encryption
> >> _and_ authentication for file contents.
> > 
> > Not good enough for me.  I want authenticated encryption for
> > everything, contents or metadata.
> 
> Well, let's focus first on file contents.
> We have already the fscrypo framework.
> 
> What you suggest is completely different from what we have now.
> 
> >> AEAD modes like GCM or future finalists of the CAESAR competition
> >> come to mind.
> > 
> > GCM is problematic for block storage, primarily because it's
> > catastrophic to reuse a key/IV pair.
> > 
> > If you naively use the same key when writing more than 2^32 blocks
> > with a random IV, you've just stepped into the collision "danger
> > zone" (per NIST SP 800-38D).  We have a design that involves frequent
> > encryption key derivation in order to address the collision space
> > problem.  But that's just one piece of the solution to the whole
> > problem.
> > 
> >> IIRC the ext4 encryption design document mentions this, but it's
> >> unclear to me why AES-GCM wasn't used for file contents from the
> >> beginning. I'd guess it has to do with where to store the
> >> authentication tag and performance.
> > 
> > Comparatively, that's the easy part.  The hard part is ensuring
> > *consistency* between the ciphertext and the cryptographic metadata.
> > If you write out the ciphertext and don't get the IV you used for it
> > out to storage simultaneously, you've just lost the block.  And
> > vice-versa.
> > 
> > Then there's the problem of internal consistency.  Supposing you do
> > manage to get the blocks and their crypto metadata out together,
> > what's to stop an attacker from punching holes (for example)?  You
> > need an authenticated dictionary structure at that point, such as a
> > Merkle tree or an authenticated skiplist.
> > 
> > Now you have an additional data structure to maintain.  And you're
> > rebalancing a Merkle tree in the midst of modifications, or you're
> > producing an implementation of ASL in the Linux kernel (which, BTW, my
> > team does have a prototype for right now).
> > 
> > Once we have a root of an authenticated dictionary, we can look to a
> > high-performance secure hardware element to sign that root against a
> > monotonic counter to get rollback protection.
> > 
> > To protect the entire block device, we need the authentication data to
> > be consistent with the ciphertext at the block level.  So that means
> > something like copy-on-write or log-structured volume at the dm-
> > layer.  Right now the best shortcut I've been able to come up starts
> > with a loopback mount on btrfs.
> > 
> >> Does anybody have details on that?
> > 
> > Hopefully I've been able to shine some light on the reasons why
> > high-performance random access read/write block storage encryption
> > with authentication is a harder problem than it looks on the surface.
> > 
> > In the meantime, to address the CBC thing, I'd want to understand what
> > the hardware is doing exactly.  I wouldn't want the existence of code
> > that supports CBC in fs/crypto to be interpreted as some sort of
> > endorsement for using it rather than XTS (when unauthenticated
> > encryption is for some reason the only viable option) for new storage
> > encryption applications.
> 
> The hardware offers AES-CBC, accessible via the kernel crypto API.

I presume your goal is to usually package up relatively large segments
of data you'd like to chain together under one key/IV?

Else, for random-access block storage, I would like to get on idea on
what the latency/throughput/power impact would be vs. just doing
AES-XTS on the CPU.

Regardless, if you need IV generation in fs/crypto, you can use ESSIV
from eCryptfs as an example.  Except you'll probably want to use
SHA-256 instead of MD5, if only for the sake of hygiene.
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