linux-ext4 - Re: [PATCH v7 09/16] fscrypt: add an HKDF-SHA512 implementation

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Message-ID: <20190728193949.GI6088@mit.edu>
Date:   Sun, 28 Jul 2019 15:39:49 -0400
From:   "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>
To:     Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...nel.org>
Cc:     linux-fscrypt@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org, linux-f2fs-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net,
        linux-mtd@...ts.infradead.org, linux-api@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-crypto@...r.kernel.org, keyrings@...r.kernel.org,
        Paul Crowley <paulcrowley@...gle.com>,
        Satya Tangirala <satyat@...gle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v7 09/16] fscrypt: add an HKDF-SHA512 implementation

On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 03:41:34PM -0700, Eric Biggers wrote:
> From: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...gle.com>
> 
> Add an implementation of HKDF (RFC 5869) to fscrypt, for the purpose of
> deriving additional key material from the fscrypt master keys for v2
> encryption policies.  HKDF is a key derivation function built on top of
> HMAC.  We choose SHA-512 for the underlying unkeyed hash, and use an
> "hmac(sha512)" transform allocated from the crypto API.
> 
> We'll be using this to replace the AES-ECB based KDF currently used to
> derive the per-file encryption keys.  While the AES-ECB based KDF is
> believed to meet the original security requirements, it is nonstandard
> and has problems that don't exist in modern KDFs such as HKDF:
> 
> 1. It's reversible.  Given a derived key and nonce, an attacker can
>    easily compute the master key.  This is okay if the master key and
>    derived keys are equally hard to compromise, but now we'd like to be
>    more robust against threats such as a derived key being compromised
>    through a timing attack, or a derived key for an in-use file being
>    compromised after the master key has already been removed.
> 
> 2. It doesn't evenly distribute the entropy from the master key; each 16
>    input bytes only affects the corresponding 16 output bytes.
> 
> 3. It isn't easily extensible to deriving other values or keys, such as
>    a public hash for securely identifying the key, or per-mode keys.
>    Per-mode keys will be immediately useful for Adiantum encryption, for
>    which fscrypt currently uses the master key directly, introducing
>    unnecessary usage constraints.  Per-mode keys will also be useful for
>    hardware inline encryption, which is currently being worked on.
> 
> HKDF solves all the above problems.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...gle.com>

Unless I missed something there's nothing here which is fscrypt
specific.  Granted that it's somewhat unlikely that someone would want
to implement (the very bloated) IKE from IPSEC in the kernel, I wonder
if there might be other users of HKDF, and whether this would be
better placed in lib/ or crypto/ instead of fs/crypto?

Other than that, looks good.  Feel free to add:

Reviewed-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>