Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2015 11:15:34 -0700
From: Bill Cox <waywardgeek@...il.com>
To: "discussions@...sword-hashing.net" <discussions@...sword-hashing.net>
Subject: Re: [PHC] Another PHC candidates "mechanical" tests (ROUND2)

The default number of threads in Lyra2's PHC call is 2.  Did you modify it
to one?

Bill

On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 2:40 AM, Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 09:48:06AM +0100, Milan Broz wrote:
> > On 03/25/2015 05:49 AM, Solar Designer wrote:
> > > I think you should include more info on your two test platforms.  Most
> > > notably, the specific CPU types and clock rate.
> >
> > OK, I am trying to avoid these test to be presented as a performance
> tests
> > because with reference implementations it would be unfair.
> >
> > Anyway, there is already lscpu for both platforms in git
> >
> https://github.com/mbroz/PHCtest/blob/master/output/round2_Lenovo_X230_i5_16G/lscpu
> >
> > https://github.com/mbroz/PHCtest/blob/master/output/round2_PPC64/lscpu
> > (This is quite a big machine, actually running Fedora for some Red Hat
> > distro development I have access to)
>
> Thanks!
>
> > > The charts showing real memory usage and real time vs. the cost
> > > parameter values might be useful, but it would also be useful to see a
> > > cross-chart of real memory usage vs. real time (with the lowest time
> cost
> > > setting supported by each scheme) and with growing memory cost setting
> > > (this is how you'd control the real time).
> >
> > Isn't it what Figure 1 already shows?
>
> No.
>
> > Or you mean some combination?
>
> Yes.
>
> > (tcost is minimal for each candidate there, memory cost is increasing
> and chart
> > shows real memory use + real run time).
>
> Yes, but the x-axis is in different units for different candidates.  I'd
> like a chart combining the data for y-axes from these two charts, using
> one of these on the new chart's x-axis and the other on y-axis.
>
> > > Lyra2 is surprisingly fast.  That's nice.  Your table does not give
> > > exact numbers for candidates meeting your requirements, though - maybe
> > > you can add that (for their lowest supported t_cost)?
> >
> > For the last KDF test the exact input parameters are in Table 5, times
> > are in log directory. For example with the minimal t_cost:
> >
> https://github.com/mbroz/PHCtest/blob/master/output/round2_Lenovo_X230_i5_16G/m_kdf/lyra2.dat
> >
> https://github.com/mbroz/PHCtest/blob/master/output/round2_Lenovo_X230_i5_16G/m_kdf/lyra2-sse.dat
>
> So it's 515 ms for the SIMD-enabled Lyra2 to reach 1 GB.  Including
> memory (de)allocation overhead, right?
>
> > I did not want to modify default internal configurations (and I think it
> > should not be even needed. Give users some knobs and they'll find
> insecure
> > combination and will use it as the default... well, joking :-)
>
> This is always a concern, yes.
>
> > Why I do not use multiple threads is based on disk-encryption my use
> case:
> >
> > In general, FDE-enabled disk can be moved between several machines with
> > completely different performance and hardware configurations.
> >
> > On slow machine unlocking should take more time and it would be
> > probably acceptable (in some reasonable limits).
> >
> > But if it cannot be unlocked at all (cannot run parallel threads) it is
> > unacceptable for the user (usability fail). Security/usability
> tradeoff...
>
> No, this particular tradeoff does not exist.  You can always run the
> would-be-threads sequentially (or switch between them).  e.g. I've been
> testing yescrypt with p=41 on a machine with 8 logical CPUs, running
> only 8 threads at a time.  In the current submitted yescrypt code,
> OpenMP takes care of that.  Or you can simply build without
> multi-threading support (neither OpenMP nor anything else) and still be
> able to compute a p > 1 derived key, just slower as you say.
>
> The real tradeoff is that excessive parallelism weakens security: the
> attacker might need less memory (presumably expensive) per compute core
> (presumably cheap).  For this reason, maybe yescrypt's default pwxform
> rounds count isn't best for your use case.  It works better for user
> authentication where the parallelism comes from concurrent requests
> anyway.  There's another reason for the 6 rounds, though - this achieves
> bcrypt-like rate of S-box lookups, needed to ensure bcrypt-like GPU
> attack resistance.
>
> > The second reason is that it can could run in a very limited environment
> > (a bootloader for full system encryption) where threads are not easily
> manageable.
>
> So you can run a thread-less build.  No problem there.  You just need to
> provide the memory...
>
> ...Speaking of which: this is where a security/usability tradeoff
> actually exists.  If you use e.g. Lyra2 or YESCRYPT_RW and require 1 GB,
> you'd have a really hard time computing on a machine with less RAM than
> that since we're deliberately discouraging TMTO attacks (and thus
> legitimate uses as well).  Classic scrypt and YESCRYPT_WORM solve
> this, at the expense of lower area-time product and TMTO-friendliness
> for attackers as well.  (I think there is not yet a defender-friendly
> implementation of classic scrypt, nor YESCRYPT_WORM, for uses on lower
> memory machines.  But it's just a matter of implementation.  This can be
> implemented easily when the need arises.)  <plug>I think yescrypt is the
> only entry in this competition that retained this flexibility.</plug>
>
> Unfortunately, the security impact of YESCRYPT_WORM (vs. _RW) is very
> significant.  It's almost the same as going back to classic scrypt,
> with only minor tweaks added (such as the garbage collector attack
> resistance I mentioned earlier today).  (In part, this is deliberate: to
> ease implementation of YESCRYPT_WORM by slightly revising existing
> implementations of classic scrypt.)
>
> Alexander
>

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