commit 6e8ec2552c7d13991148e551e3325a624d73fac6 upstream.
The current 4096-bit LFSR used for entropy collection had a few
desirable attributes for the context in which it was created. For
example, the state was huge, which meant that /dev/random would be able
to output quite a bit of accumulated entropy before blocking. It was
also, in its time, quite fast at accumulating entropy byte-by-byte,
which matters given the varying contexts in which mix_pool_bytes() is
called. And its diffusion was relatively high, which meant that changes
would ripple across several words of state rather quickly.
However, it also suffers from a few security vulnerabilities. In
particular, inputs learned by an attacker can be undone, but moreover,
if the state of the pool leaks, its contents can be controlled and
entirely zeroed out. I've demonstrated this attack with this SMT2
script, <https://xn--4db.cc/5o9xO8pb>, which Boolector/CaDiCal solves in
a matter of seconds on a single core of my laptop, resulting in little
proof of concept C demonstrators such as <https://xn--4db.cc/jCkvvIaH/c>.
For basically all recent formal models of RNGs, these attacks represent
a significant cryptographic flaw. But how does this manifest
practically? If an attacker has access to the system to such a degree
that he can learn the internal state of the RNG, arguably there are
other lower hanging vulnerabilities -- side-channel, infoleak, or
otherwise -- that might have higher priority. On the other hand, seed
files are frequently used on systems that have a hard time generating
much entropy on their own, and these seed files, being files, often leak
or are duplicated and distributed accidentally, or are even seeded over
the Internet intentionally, where their contents might be recorded or
tampered with. Seen this way, an otherwise quasi-implausible
vulnerability is a bit more practical than initially thought.
Another aspect of the current mix_pool_bytes() function is that, while
its performance was arguably competitive for the time in which it was
created, it's no longer considered so. This patch improves performance
significantly: on a high-end CPU, an i7-11850H, it improves performance
of mix_pool_bytes() by 225%, and on a low-end CPU, a Cortex-A7, it
improves performance by 103%.
This commit replaces the LFSR of mix_pool_bytes() with a straight-
forward cryptographic hash function, BLAKE2s, which is already in use
for pool extraction. Universal hashing with a secret seed was considered
too, something along the lines of <https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/338>,
but the requirement for a secret seed makes for a chicken & egg problem.
Instead we go with a formally proven scheme using a computational hash
function, described in sections 5.1, 6.4, and B.1.8 of
<https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/198>.
BLAKE2s outputs 256 bits, which should give us an appropriate amount of
min-entropy accumulation, and a wide enough margin of collision
resistance against active attacks. mix_pool_bytes() becomes a simple
call to blake2s_update(), for accumulation, while the extraction step
becomes a blake2s_final() to generate a seed, with which we can then do
a HKDF-like or BLAKE2X-like expansion, the first part of which we fold
back as an init key for subsequent blake2s_update()s, and the rest we
produce to the caller. This then is provided to our CRNG like usual. In
that expansion step, we make opportunistic use of 32 bytes of RDRAND
output, just as before. We also always reseed the crng with 32 bytes,
unconditionally, or not at all, rather than sometimes with 16 as before,
as we don't win anything by limiting beyond the 16 byte threshold.
Going for a hash function as an entropy collector is a conservative,
proven approach. The result of all this is a much simpler and much less
bespoke construction than what's there now, which not only plugs a
vulnerability but also improves performance considerably.
Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
Cc: Dominik Brodowski <linux@dominikbrodowski.net>
Reviewed-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Jean-Philippe Aumasson <jeanphilippe.aumasson@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@zx2c4.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.
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