Re: [RFC PATCH] crypto: chacha20 - add implementation using 96-bit nonce

[Martin Willi]

Hi,

> Anyway, I actually thought it was intentional that the ChaCha
> implementations in the Linux kernel allowed specifying the block
> counter, and therefore allowed seeking to any point in the keystream,
> exposing the full functionality of the cipher.

If I remember correctly, it was indeed intentional. When building the
chacha20poly1305 AEAD both in [1] and [2], a block counter of 0 is used
to generate the Poly1305 key. For the ChaCha20 encryption, an explicit
initial block counter of 1 is used to avoid reusing the same counter.

Maybe it would be possible to implement this with implicit counters,
but doing this explicitly looked much clearer to me. So I guess there
are use cases for explicit block counters in ChaCha20.

Best regards
Martin

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7539#section-2.8
[2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7634#section-2

Re: [RFC PATCH] crypto: chacha20 - add implementation using 96-bit nonce

[Herbert Xu]

Ard Biesheuvel  wrote:
> As pointed out by Eric [0], the way RFC7539 was interpreted when creating
> our implementation of ChaCha20 creates a risk of IV reuse when using a
> little endian counter as the IV generator. The reason is that the low end
> bits of the counter get mapped onto the ChaCha20 block counter, which
> advances every 64 bytes. This means that the counter value that gets
> selected as IV for the next input block will collide with the ChaCha20
> block counter of the previous block, basically recreating the same
> keystream but shifted by 64 bytes.

As Eric pointed out for steram ciphers such as chacha20 our policy
is to expose the raw IV in the base algorithm, and then layer
more restrictive implementations on top that can then be used
in different scenarios such as IPsec or disk encryption.

For example, with CTR, ctr(aes) is the base algorithm and places
no restrictions on the IV, while rfc3686(ctr(aes)) is the more
restrictive version that's used by IPsec.

Within the kernel I don't really see an issue with abuse because
all users are hopefully reviewed by the community.  If you're
worried about incorrect use in user-space we could think about
restricting access to these base implementations.

For chacha20 we did not add a restrictive template because the
primary user IPsec uses it only through AEAD where the IV restriction
is in place.

Cheers,
-- 
Email: Herbert Xu 
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
PGP Key: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/pubkey.txt

Re: [RFC PATCH] crypto: chacha20 - add implementation using 96-bit nonce

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On 8 December 2017 at 23:11, Eric Biggers  wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 08, 2017 at 10:54:24PM +, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
>> >> Note that there are two conflicting conventions for what inputs ChaCha 
>> >> takes.
>> >> The original paper by Daniel Bernstein
>> >> (https://cr.yp.to/chacha/chacha-20080128.pdf) says that the block counter 
>> >> is
>> >> 64-bit and the nonce is 64-bit, thereby expanding the key into 2^64 
>> >> randomly
>> >> accessible streams, each containing 2^64 randomly accessible 64-byte 
>> >> blocks.
>> >>
>> >> The RFC 7539 convention is equivalent to seeking to a large offset 
>> >> (determined
>> >> by the first 32 bits of the 96-bit nonce) in the keystream defined by the 
>> >> djb
>> >> convention, but only if the 32-bit portion of the block counter never 
>> >> overflows.
>> >>
>> >> Maybe it is only RFC 7539 that matters because that is what is being
>> >> standardized by the IETF; I don't know.  But it confused me.
>> >>
>> >
>> > The distinction only matters if you start the counter at zero (or
>> > one), because you 'lose' 32 bits of IV that will never be != 0 in
>> > practice if you use a 64-bit counter.
>> >
>> > So that argues for not exposing the block counter as part of the API,
>> > given that it should start at zero anyway, and that you should take
>> > care not to put colliding values in it.
>> >
>> >> Anyway, I actually thought it was intentional that the ChaCha 
>> >> implementations in
>> >> the Linux kernel allowed specifying the block counter, and therefore 
>> >> allowed
>> >> seeking to any point in the keystream, exposing the full functionality of 
>> >> the
>> >> cipher.  It's true that it's easily misused though, so there may 
>> >> nevertheless be
>> >> value in providing a nonce-only variant.
>> >>
>> >
>> > Currently, the skcipher API does not allow such random access, so
>> > while I can see how that could be a useful feature, we can't really
>> > make use of it today. But more importantly, it still does not mean the
>> > block counter should be exposed to the /users/ of the skcipher API
>> > which typically encrypt/decrypt blocks that are much larger than 64
>> > bytes.
>>
>> ... but now that I think of it, how is this any different from, say,
>> AES in CTR mode? The counter is big endian, but apart from that, using
>> IVs derived from a counter will result in the exact same issue, only
>> with a shift of 16 bytes.
>>
>> That means using file block numbers as IV is simply inappropriate, and
>> you should encrypt them first like is done for AES-CBC
>
> The problem with using a stream cipher --- whether that is ChaCha20, AES-CTR, 
> or
> something else --- for disk/file encryption is that by necessity of file/disk
> encryption, each time the "same" block is written to, the IV is the same, 
> which
> is really bad for stream ciphers (but not as bad for AES-XTS, AES-CBC, etc.).
> It's irrelevant whether you do ESSIV or otherwise encrypt the IVs.  ESSIV does
> make the IV for each offset unpredictable by an attacker, which is desirable 
> for
> AES-CBC, but it doesn't stop the IV from being repeated for each overwrite.
>

I'm not suggesting using an encrypted IV to fix the stream cipher
issue, I'm well aware that that is impossible. What I am saying is
that the counter collision can be mitigated by encrypting the IV.

> And just to clarify, you definitely *can* seek to any position in the ChaCha20
> stream using the existing ChaCha20 implementations and the existing skcipher
> API, simply by providing the appropriate IV.  Maybe it was unintentional, but 
> it
> does work.  chacha20poly1305.c even uses it to start at block 1 instead of 
> block
> 0.  I don't know whether there are other users, though.
>

Well, I understand that that's how ChaCha20 works, and that you can
manipulate the IV directly to start at another point in the keystream.
AES-CTR can do exactly the same, for the same reason. What I am saying
is that the skcipher API does not allow you to decrypt an arbitrary
part of a block, which could benefit from the ability of not having to
generate the entire key stream.

So the more we discuss this, the more I think there is actually no
difference with AES-CTR (apart from the block size), and there a
similar enhancement in RFC3686 where the IV does not cover the AES
block level counter, making it safe to use another counter to generate
the IVs.

Of course, this is essentially what you did for the fscrypt code, I
just don't like seeing that kind of reasoning being implement in the
crypto API client.

Re: [RFC PATCH] crypto: chacha20 - add implementation using 96-bit nonce

[Eric Biggers]

On Fri, Dec 08, 2017 at 10:54:24PM +, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> >> Note that there are two conflicting conventions for what inputs ChaCha 
> >> takes.
> >> The original paper by Daniel Bernstein
> >> (https://cr.yp.to/chacha/chacha-20080128.pdf) says that the block counter 
> >> is
> >> 64-bit and the nonce is 64-bit, thereby expanding the key into 2^64 
> >> randomly
> >> accessible streams, each containing 2^64 randomly accessible 64-byte 
> >> blocks.
> >>
> >> The RFC 7539 convention is equivalent to seeking to a large offset 
> >> (determined
> >> by the first 32 bits of the 96-bit nonce) in the keystream defined by the 
> >> djb
> >> convention, but only if the 32-bit portion of the block counter never 
> >> overflows.
> >>
> >> Maybe it is only RFC 7539 that matters because that is what is being
> >> standardized by the IETF; I don't know.  But it confused me.
> >>
> >
> > The distinction only matters if you start the counter at zero (or
> > one), because you 'lose' 32 bits of IV that will never be != 0 in
> > practice if you use a 64-bit counter.
> >
> > So that argues for not exposing the block counter as part of the API,
> > given that it should start at zero anyway, and that you should take
> > care not to put colliding values in it.
> >
> >> Anyway, I actually thought it was intentional that the ChaCha 
> >> implementations in
> >> the Linux kernel allowed specifying the block counter, and therefore 
> >> allowed
> >> seeking to any point in the keystream, exposing the full functionality of 
> >> the
> >> cipher.  It's true that it's easily misused though, so there may 
> >> nevertheless be
> >> value in providing a nonce-only variant.
> >>
> >
> > Currently, the skcipher API does not allow such random access, so
> > while I can see how that could be a useful feature, we can't really
> > make use of it today. But more importantly, it still does not mean the
> > block counter should be exposed to the /users/ of the skcipher API
> > which typically encrypt/decrypt blocks that are much larger than 64
> > bytes.
> 
> ... but now that I think of it, how is this any different from, say,
> AES in CTR mode? The counter is big endian, but apart from that, using
> IVs derived from a counter will result in the exact same issue, only
> with a shift of 16 bytes.
> 
> That means using file block numbers as IV is simply inappropriate, and
> you should encrypt them first like is done for AES-CBC

The problem with using a stream cipher --- whether that is ChaCha20, AES-CTR, or
something else --- for disk/file encryption is that by necessity of file/disk
encryption, each time the "same" block is written to, the IV is the same, which
is really bad for stream ciphers (but not as bad for AES-XTS, AES-CBC, etc.).
It's irrelevant whether you do ESSIV or otherwise encrypt the IVs.  ESSIV does
make the IV for each offset unpredictable by an attacker, which is desirable for
AES-CBC, but it doesn't stop the IV from being repeated for each overwrite.

And just to clarify, you definitely *can* seek to any position in the ChaCha20
stream using the existing ChaCha20 implementations and the existing skcipher
API, simply by providing the appropriate IV.  Maybe it was unintentional, but it
does work.  chacha20poly1305.c even uses it to start at block 1 instead of block
0.  I don't know whether there are other users, though.

Eric

Re: [RFC PATCH] crypto: chacha20 - add implementation using 96-bit nonce

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On 8 December 2017 at 22:42, Ard Biesheuvel  wrote:
> On 8 December 2017 at 22:17, Eric Biggers  wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 08, 2017 at 11:55:02AM +, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
>>> As pointed out by Eric [0], the way RFC7539 was interpreted when creating
>>> our implementation of ChaCha20 creates a risk of IV reuse when using a
>>> little endian counter as the IV generator. The reason is that the low end
>>> bits of the counter get mapped onto the ChaCha20 block counter, which
>>> advances every 64 bytes. This means that the counter value that gets
>>> selected as IV for the next input block will collide with the ChaCha20
>>> block counter of the previous block, basically recreating the same
>>> keystream but shifted by 64 bytes.
>>>
>>> RFC7539 describes the inputs of the algorithm as follows:
>>>
>>>   The inputs to ChaCha20 are:
>>>
>>>  o  A 256-bit key
>>>
>>>  o  A 32-bit initial counter.  This can be set to any number, but will
>>> usually be zero or one.  It makes sense to use one if we use the
>>> zero block for something else, such as generating a one-time
>>> authenticator key as part of an AEAD algorithm.
>>>
>>>  o  A 96-bit nonce.  In some protocols, this is known as the
>>> Initialization Vector.
>>>
>>>  o  An arbitrary-length plaintext
>>>
>>> The solution is to use a fixed value of 0 for the initial counter, and
>>> only expose a 96-bit IV to the upper layers of the crypto API.
>>>
>>> So introduce a new ChaCha20 flavor called chacha20-iv96, which takes the
>>> above into account, and should become the preferred ChaCha20
>>> implementation going forward for general use.
>>
>> Note that there are two conflicting conventions for what inputs ChaCha takes.
>> The original paper by Daniel Bernstein
>> (https://cr.yp.to/chacha/chacha-20080128.pdf) says that the block counter is
>> 64-bit and the nonce is 64-bit, thereby expanding the key into 2^64 randomly
>> accessible streams, each containing 2^64 randomly accessible 64-byte blocks.
>>
>> The RFC 7539 convention is equivalent to seeking to a large offset 
>> (determined
>> by the first 32 bits of the 96-bit nonce) in the keystream defined by the djb
>> convention, but only if the 32-bit portion of the block counter never 
>> overflows.
>>
>> Maybe it is only RFC 7539 that matters because that is what is being
>> standardized by the IETF; I don't know.  But it confused me.
>>
>
> The distinction only matters if you start the counter at zero (or
> one), because you 'lose' 32 bits of IV that will never be != 0 in
> practice if you use a 64-bit counter.
>
> So that argues for not exposing the block counter as part of the API,
> given that it should start at zero anyway, and that you should take
> care not to put colliding values in it.
>
>> Anyway, I actually thought it was intentional that the ChaCha 
>> implementations in
>> the Linux kernel allowed specifying the block counter, and therefore allowed
>> seeking to any point in the keystream, exposing the full functionality of the
>> cipher.  It's true that it's easily misused though, so there may 
>> nevertheless be
>> value in providing a nonce-only variant.
>>
>
> Currently, the skcipher API does not allow such random access, so
> while I can see how that could be a useful feature, we can't really
> make use of it today. But more importantly, it still does not mean the
> block counter should be exposed to the /users/ of the skcipher API
> which typically encrypt/decrypt blocks that are much larger than 64
> bytes.

... but now that I think of it, how is this any different from, say,
AES in CTR mode? The counter is big endian, but apart from that, using
IVs derived from a counter will result in the exact same issue, only
with a shift of 16 bytes.

That means using file block numbers as IV is simply inappropriate, and
you should encrypt them first like is done for AES-CBC

Re: [RFC PATCH] crypto: chacha20 - add implementation using 96-bit nonce

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On 8 December 2017 at 22:17, Eric Biggers  wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 08, 2017 at 11:55:02AM +, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
>> As pointed out by Eric [0], the way RFC7539 was interpreted when creating
>> our implementation of ChaCha20 creates a risk of IV reuse when using a
>> little endian counter as the IV generator. The reason is that the low end
>> bits of the counter get mapped onto the ChaCha20 block counter, which
>> advances every 64 bytes. This means that the counter value that gets
>> selected as IV for the next input block will collide with the ChaCha20
>> block counter of the previous block, basically recreating the same
>> keystream but shifted by 64 bytes.
>>
>> RFC7539 describes the inputs of the algorithm as follows:
>>
>>   The inputs to ChaCha20 are:
>>
>>  o  A 256-bit key
>>
>>  o  A 32-bit initial counter.  This can be set to any number, but will
>> usually be zero or one.  It makes sense to use one if we use the
>> zero block for something else, such as generating a one-time
>> authenticator key as part of an AEAD algorithm.
>>
>>  o  A 96-bit nonce.  In some protocols, this is known as the
>> Initialization Vector.
>>
>>  o  An arbitrary-length plaintext
>>
>> The solution is to use a fixed value of 0 for the initial counter, and
>> only expose a 96-bit IV to the upper layers of the crypto API.
>>
>> So introduce a new ChaCha20 flavor called chacha20-iv96, which takes the
>> above into account, and should become the preferred ChaCha20
>> implementation going forward for general use.
>
> Note that there are two conflicting conventions for what inputs ChaCha takes.
> The original paper by Daniel Bernstein
> (https://cr.yp.to/chacha/chacha-20080128.pdf) says that the block counter is
> 64-bit and the nonce is 64-bit, thereby expanding the key into 2^64 randomly
> accessible streams, each containing 2^64 randomly accessible 64-byte blocks.
>
> The RFC 7539 convention is equivalent to seeking to a large offset (determined
> by the first 32 bits of the 96-bit nonce) in the keystream defined by the djb
> convention, but only if the 32-bit portion of the block counter never 
> overflows.
>
> Maybe it is only RFC 7539 that matters because that is what is being
> standardized by the IETF; I don't know.  But it confused me.
>

The distinction only matters if you start the counter at zero (or
one), because you 'lose' 32 bits of IV that will never be != 0 in
practice if you use a 64-bit counter.

So that argues for not exposing the block counter as part of the API,
given that it should start at zero anyway, and that you should take
care not to put colliding values in it.

> Anyway, I actually thought it was intentional that the ChaCha implementations 
> in
> the Linux kernel allowed specifying the block counter, and therefore allowed
> seeking to any point in the keystream, exposing the full functionality of the
> cipher.  It's true that it's easily misused though, so there may nevertheless 
> be
> value in providing a nonce-only variant.
>

Currently, the skcipher API does not allow such random access, so
while I can see how that could be a useful feature, we can't really
make use of it today. But more importantly, it still does not mean the
block counter should be exposed to the /users/ of the skcipher API
which typically encrypt/decrypt blocks that are much larger than 64
bytes.

Re: [RFC PATCH] crypto: chacha20 - add implementation using 96-bit nonce

[Eric Biggers]

On Fri, Dec 08, 2017 at 11:55:02AM +, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> As pointed out by Eric [0], the way RFC7539 was interpreted when creating
> our implementation of ChaCha20 creates a risk of IV reuse when using a
> little endian counter as the IV generator. The reason is that the low end
> bits of the counter get mapped onto the ChaCha20 block counter, which
> advances every 64 bytes. This means that the counter value that gets
> selected as IV for the next input block will collide with the ChaCha20
> block counter of the previous block, basically recreating the same
> keystream but shifted by 64 bytes.
> 
> RFC7539 describes the inputs of the algorithm as follows:
> 
>   The inputs to ChaCha20 are:
> 
>  o  A 256-bit key
> 
>  o  A 32-bit initial counter.  This can be set to any number, but will
> usually be zero or one.  It makes sense to use one if we use the
> zero block for something else, such as generating a one-time
> authenticator key as part of an AEAD algorithm.
> 
>  o  A 96-bit nonce.  In some protocols, this is known as the
> Initialization Vector.
> 
>  o  An arbitrary-length plaintext
> 
> The solution is to use a fixed value of 0 for the initial counter, and
> only expose a 96-bit IV to the upper layers of the crypto API.
> 
> So introduce a new ChaCha20 flavor called chacha20-iv96, which takes the
> above into account, and should become the preferred ChaCha20
> implementation going forward for general use.

Note that there are two conflicting conventions for what inputs ChaCha takes.
The original paper by Daniel Bernstein
(https://cr.yp.to/chacha/chacha-20080128.pdf) says that the block counter is
64-bit and the nonce is 64-bit, thereby expanding the key into 2^64 randomly
accessible streams, each containing 2^64 randomly accessible 64-byte blocks.

The RFC 7539 convention is equivalent to seeking to a large offset (determined
by the first 32 bits of the 96-bit nonce) in the keystream defined by the djb
convention, but only if the 32-bit portion of the block counter never overflows.

Maybe it is only RFC 7539 that matters because that is what is being
standardized by the IETF; I don't know.  But it confused me.

Anyway, I actually thought it was intentional that the ChaCha implementations in
the Linux kernel allowed specifying the block counter, and therefore allowed
seeking to any point in the keystream, exposing the full functionality of the
cipher.  It's true that it's easily misused though, so there may nevertheless be
value in providing a nonce-only variant.

Eric

[RFC PATCH] crypto: chacha20 - add implementation using 96-bit nonce

[Ard Biesheuvel]

As pointed out by Eric [0], the way RFC7539 was interpreted when creating
our implementation of ChaCha20 creates a risk of IV reuse when using a
little endian counter as the IV generator. The reason is that the low end
bits of the counter get mapped onto the ChaCha20 block counter, which
advances every 64 bytes. This means that the counter value that gets
selected as IV for the next input block will collide with the ChaCha20
block counter of the previous block, basically recreating the same
keystream but shifted by 64 bytes.

RFC7539 describes the inputs of the algorithm as follows:

  The inputs to ChaCha20 are:

 o  A 256-bit key

 o  A 32-bit initial counter.  This can be set to any number, but will
usually be zero or one.  It makes sense to use one if we use the
zero block for something else, such as generating a one-time
authenticator key as part of an AEAD algorithm.

 o  A 96-bit nonce.  In some protocols, this is known as the
Initialization Vector.

 o  An arbitrary-length plaintext

The solution is to use a fixed value of 0 for the initial counter, and
only expose a 96-bit IV to the upper layers of the crypto API.

So introduce a new ChaCha20 flavor called chacha20-iv96, which takes the
above into account, and should become the preferred ChaCha20
implementation going forward for general use.

[0] https://marc.info/?l=linux-crypto-vger=151269722430848=2

Cc: Eric Biggers 
Cc: linux-fscr...@vger.kernel.org
Cc: Theodore Ts'o 
Cc: linux-e...@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-f2fs-de...@lists.sourceforge.net
Cc: linux-...@lists.infradead.org
Cc: linux-fsde...@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-crypto@vger.kernel.org
Cc: Jaegeuk Kim 
Cc: Michael Halcrow 
Cc: Paul Crowley 
Cc: Martin Willi 
Cc: David Gstir 
Cc: "Jason A . Donenfeld" 
Cc: Stephan Mueller 
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel 
---
 arch/arm64/crypto/chacha20-neon-glue.c | 27 +++---
 arch/x86/crypto/chacha20_glue.c| 19 +-
 crypto/chacha20_generic.c  | 38 ++--
 crypto/testmgr.c   |  9 +
 crypto/testmgr.h   |  2 +-
 include/crypto/chacha20.h  |  4 ++-
 6 files changed, 81 insertions(+), 18 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/arm64/crypto/chacha20-neon-glue.c 
b/arch/arm64/crypto/chacha20-neon-glue.c
index cbdb75d15cd0..76a570058cc8 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/crypto/chacha20-neon-glue.c
+++ b/arch/arm64/crypto/chacha20-neon-glue.c
@@ -70,7 +70,7 @@ static int chacha20_neon(struct skcipher_request *req)
 
err = skcipher_walk_virt(, req, true);
 
-   crypto_chacha20_init(state, ctx, walk.iv);
+   crypto_chacha20_init(state, ctx, walk.iv, crypto_skcipher_ivsize(tfm));
 
kernel_neon_begin();
while (walk.nbytes > 0) {
@@ -88,7 +88,7 @@ static int chacha20_neon(struct skcipher_request *req)
return err;
 }
 
-static struct skcipher_alg alg = {
+static struct skcipher_alg alg[] = {{
.base.cra_name  = "chacha20",
.base.cra_driver_name   = "chacha20-neon",
.base.cra_priority  = 300,
@@ -104,19 +104,35 @@ static struct skcipher_alg alg = {
.setkey = crypto_chacha20_setkey,
.encrypt= chacha20_neon,
.decrypt= chacha20_neon,
-};
+}, {
+   .base.cra_name  = "chacha20-iv96",
+   .base.cra_driver_name   = "chacha20-neon",
+   .base.cra_priority  = 300,
+   .base.cra_blocksize = 1,
+   .base.cra_ctxsize   = sizeof(struct chacha20_ctx),
+   .base.cra_module= THIS_MODULE,
+
+   .min_keysize= CHACHA20_KEY_SIZE,
+   .max_keysize= CHACHA20_KEY_SIZE,
+   .ivsize = CHACHA20_NONCE_SIZE,
+   .chunksize  = CHACHA20_BLOCK_SIZE,
+   .walksize   = 4 * CHACHA20_BLOCK_SIZE,
+   .setkey = crypto_chacha20_setkey,
+   .encrypt= chacha20_neon,
+   .decrypt= chacha20_neon,
+}};
 
 static int __init chacha20_simd_mod_init(void)
 {
if (!(elf_hwcap & HWCAP_ASIMD))
return -ENODEV;
 
-   return crypto_register_skcipher();
+   return crypto_register_skciphers(alg, ARRAY_SIZE(alg));
 }
 
 static void __exit chacha20_simd_mod_fini(void)
 {
-   crypto_unregister_skcipher();
+   crypto_unregister_skciphers(alg, ARRAY_SIZE(alg));
 }
 
 module_init(chacha20_simd_mod_init);
@@ -125,3 +141,4 @@ module_exit(chacha20_simd_mod_fini);
 MODULE_AUTHOR("Ard Biesheuvel ");
 MODULE_LICENSE("GPL v2");
 MODULE_ALIAS_CRYPTO("chacha20");
+MODULE_ALIAS_CRYPTO("chacha20-iv96");
diff --git a/arch/x86/crypto/chacha20_glue.c b/arch/x86/crypto/chacha20_glue.c
index