Date:	Thu, 9 Apr 2015 10:08:43 -0400
From:	Mike Snitzer <snitzer@...hat.com>
To:	Pali Rohár <pali.rohar@...il.com>
Cc:	Alasdair Kergon <agk@...hat.com>, Neil Brown <neilb@...e.de>,
	"Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@...ysocki.net>,
	Len Brown <len.brown@...el.com>, Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>,
	dm-devel@...hat.com, linux-raid@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-pm@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] dm-crypt: Adds support for wiping key when doing
 suspend/hibernation

On Thu, Apr 09 2015 at  9:28am -0400,
Pali Rohár <pali.rohar@...il.com> wrote:

> On Thursday 09 April 2015 09:12:08 Mike Snitzer wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 06 2015 at  9:29am -0400,
> > Pali Rohár <pali.rohar@...il.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Monday 06 April 2015 15:00:46 Mike Snitzer wrote:
> > > > On Sun, Apr 05 2015 at  1:20pm -0400,
> > > > 
> > > > Pali Rohár <pali.rohar@...il.com> wrote:
> > > > > This patch series increase security of suspend and hibernate
> > > > > actions. It allows user to safely wipe crypto keys before
> > > > > suspend and hibernate actions starts without race
> > > > > conditions on userspace process with heavy I/O.
> > > > > 
> > > > > To automatically wipe cryto key for <device> before
> > > > > hibernate action call: $ dmsetup message <device> 0 key
> > > > > wipe_on_hibernation 1
> > > > > 
> > > > > To automatically wipe cryto key for <device> before suspend
> > > > > action call: $ dmsetup message <device> 0 key
> > > > > wipe_on_suspend 1
> > > > > 
> > > > > (Value 0 after wipe_* string reverts original behaviour - to
> > > > > not wipe key)
> > > > 
> > > > Can you elaborate on the attack vector your changes are meant
> > > > to protect against?  The user already authorized access, why
> > > > is it inherently dangerous to _not_ wipe the associated key
> > > > across these events?
> > > 
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > yes, I will try to explain current problems with cryptsetup 
> > > luksSuspend command and hibernation.
> > > 
> > > First, sometimes it is needed to put machine into other hands. 
> > > You can still watch other person what is doing with machine, but 
> > > once if you let machine unlocked (e.g opened luks disk), she/he 
> > > can access encrypted data.
> > > 
> > > If you turn off machine, it could be safe, because luks disk 
> > > devices are locked. But if you enter machine into suspend or 
> > > hibernate state luks devices are still open. And my patches try 
> > > to achieve similar security as when machine is off (= no crypto 
> > > keys in RAM or on swap).
> > > 
> > > When doing hibernate on unencrypted swap it is to prevent leaking 
> > > crypto keys to hibernate image (which is stored in swap).
> > > 
> > > When doing suspend action it is again to prevent leaking crypto 
> > > keys. E.g when you suspend laptop and put it off (somebody can 
> > > remove RAMs and do some cold boot attack).
> > > 
> > > The most common situation is:
> > > You have mounted partition from dm-crypt device (e.g. /home/), 
> > > some userspace processes access it (e.g opened firefox which 
> > > still reads/writes to cache ~/.firefox/) and you want to drop 
> > > crypto keys from kernel for some time.
> > > 
> > > For that operation there is command cryptsetup luksSuspend, which 
> > > suspend dm device and then tell kernel to wipe crypto keys. All 
> > > I/O operations are then stopped and userspace processes which 
> > > want to do some those I/O operations are stopped too (until you 
> > > call cryptsetup luksResume and enter correct key).
> > > 
> > > Now if you want to suspend/hiberate your machine (when some of dm 
> > > devices are suspeneded and some processes are stopped due to 
> > > pending I/O) it is not possible. Kernel freeze_processes function 
> > > will fail because userspace processes are still stopped inside 
> > > some I/O syscall (read/write, etc,...).
> > > 
> > > My patches fixes this problem and do those operations (suspend dm 
> > > device, wipe crypto keys, enter suspend/hiberate) in correct 
> > > order and without race condition.
> > > 
> > > dm device is suspended *after* userspace processes are freezed 
> > > and after that are crypto keys wiped. And then computer/laptop 
> > > enters into suspend/hibernate state.
> > 
> > Wouldn't it be better to fix freeze_processes() to be tolerant of
> > processes that are hung as a side-effect of their backing storage being
> > suspended?  A hibernate shouldn't fail simply because a user chose to
> > suspend a DM device.
> > 
> > Then this entire problem goes away and the key can be wiped from
> > userspace (like you said above).
> 
> Still there will be race condition. Before hibernation (and device
> poweroff) we should have synced disks and filesystems to prevent data
> lose (or other damage) as more as we can. And if there will be some
> application which using lot of I/O (e.g normal firefox) then there
> always will be race condtion.

The DM suspend will take care of flushing any pending I/O.  So I don't
see where the supposed race is...

Anything else that is trapped in userspace memory will be there when the
machine resumes.

> So proper way is to wipe luks crypto keys *after* userspace processes
> are freezed.

I know you believe that I'm just not accepting that at face value.
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