Re: [PATCH 0/3] dm-crypt: Adds support for wiping key when doing suspend/hibernation

From: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
To: "Pali Rohár" <pali.rohar@gmail.com>
Cc: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@redhat.com>,
	Alasdair Kergon <agk@redhat.com>, Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de>,
	"Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@rjwysocki.net>,
	Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>,
	dm-devel@redhat.com, linux-raid@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-pm@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] dm-crypt: Adds support for wiping key when doing suspend/hibernation
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2015 20:17:38 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20150406181738.GC9978@amd> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <201504061529.57299@pali>

On Mon 2015-04-06 15:29:57, Pali Rohár 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@gmail.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).

Actually... is the list of sites where the process wait small enough?
Could we modify them to be freezeable? Suspend should work even if
user stopped the his crypto partitions...

								Pavel
-- 
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