RE: [PATCH 19/22] crypto: inside-secure - add check for xts input length equal to zero

["Van Leeuwen, Pascal" <pvanleeuwen@rambus.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Horia Geantă <horia.geanta@nxp.com>
> Sent: Monday, August 10, 2020 4:34 PM
> To: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>; Van Leeuwen, Pascal <pvanleeuwen@rambus.com>
> Cc: Andrei Botila (OSS) <andrei.botila@oss.nxp.com>; David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>; linux-crypto@vger.kernel.org; linux-
> arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org; linux-s390@vger.kernel.org;
> x86@kernel.org; linux-arm-kernel@axis.com; Andrei Botila <andrei.botila@nxp.com>; Antoine Tenart <antoine.tenart@bootlin.com>
> Subject: Re: [PATCH 19/22] crypto: inside-secure - add check for xts input length equal to zero
>
> <<< External Email >>>
> On 8/10/2020 4:45 PM, Herbert Xu wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 10:20:20AM +0000, Van Leeuwen, Pascal wrote:
> >>
> >> With all due respect, but this makes no sense.
> >
> > I agree.  This is a lot of churn for no gain.
> >
> I would say the gain is that all skcipher algorithms would behave the same
> when input length equals zero - i.e. treat the request as a no-op.
>
XTS already behaves differently because it can accept any byte amount as long
as it is not in the range 0 -16. So far, you got an EINVAL error for lengths < 16.
The special exception on top of that for length 0 does not improve anything.

Treating a request of length 0 as a no-op is not a useful feature here, as there
is no use case where that would make sense. XTS encrypts blocks (usually disk
sectors), and cannot be chained. So an attempt to encrypt a zero length block
is most certainly some kind of error (e.g. trying to use XTS for something it
was not designed to do - big security mistake!).

> We can't say "no input" has any meaning to the other skcipher algorithms,
> but the convention is to accept this case and just return 0.
> I don't see why XTS has to be handled differently.
>
I don't see why you would blindly follow some historical convention ...
unless maybe there was some existing real use case that would benefit?

BTW: for generic ciphers I could think of some use cases where the zero
length request being a no-op makes sense if the application does not
bother to check how much data it has gathered to process (which may be
nothing), but I can't see how this could apply to XTS, being block-based.

> Thanks,
> Horia

Regards,
Pascal van Leeuwen
Silicon IP Architect Multi-Protocol Engines, Rambus Security
Rambus ROTW Holding BV
+31-73 6581953

Note: The Inside Secure/Verimatrix Silicon IP team was recently acquired by Rambus.
Please be so kind to update your e-mail address book with my new e-mail address.


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