[dm-devel] [RFC PATCH 2/2] md/dm-crypt - switch to AES library for EBOIV

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On Tue, 6 Aug 2019 at 13:43, Milan Broz <gmazyland at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 06/08/2019 10:02, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> > The EBOIV IV mode reuses the same AES encryption key that is used for
> > encrypting the data, and uses it to perform a single block encryption
> > of the byte offset to produce the IV.
> >
> > Since table-based AES is known to be susceptible to known-plaintext
> > attacks on the key, and given that the same key is used to encrypt
> > the byte offset (which is known to an attacker), we should be
> > careful not to permit arbitrary instantiations where the allocated
> > AES cipher is provided by aes-generic or other table-based drivers
> > that are known to be time variant and thus susceptible to this kind
> > of attack.
> >
> > Instead, let's switch to the new AES library, which has a D-cache
> > footprint that is only 1/32th of the generic AES driver, and which
> > contains some mitigations to reduce the timing variance even further.
>
> NACK.
>
> We discussed here that we will not limit combinations inside dm-crypt.
> For generic crypto API, this policy should be different, but I really
> do not want these IVs to be visible outside of dm-crypt.
>
> Allowing arbitrary combinations of a cipher, mode, and IV is how dm-crypt
> works since the beginning, and I really do not see the reason to change it.
>
> This IV mode is intended to be used for accessing old BitLocker images,
> so I do not care about performance much.
>

Apologies for being blunt, but you are basically driving home the
point I made before about why the cipher API should become internal to
the crypto subsystem.

Even though EBOIV is explicitly only intended for accessing old
BitLocker images, you prioritize non-functional properties like API
symmetry and tradition over sound cryptographic engineering practice,
even after I pointed out to you that
a) the way EBOIV uses the same symmetric key for two different
purposes is a bad idea in general, and
b) table based AES in particular is a hazard for this mode, since the
way the IV is generated is susceptible to exactly the attack that
table based AES is most criticized for.

So if you insist on supporting EBOIV in combination with arbitrary
skciphers or AEADs (or AES on systems where crypto_alloc_cipher()
produces a table based AES driver), how do you intend to mitigate
these issues?