fscrypt: allow 256-bit master keys with AES-256-XTS

fscrypt currently requires a 512-bit master key when AES-256-XTS is
used, since AES-256-XTS keys are 512-bit and fscrypt requires that the
master key be at least as long any key that will be derived from it.

However, this is overly strict because AES-256-XTS doesn't actually have
a 512-bit security strength, but rather 256-bit.  The fact that XTS
takes twice the expected key size is a quirk of the XTS mode.  It is
sufficient to use 256 bits of entropy for AES-256-XTS, provided that it
is first properly expanded into a 512-bit key, which HKDF-SHA512 does.

Therefore, relax the check of the master key size to use the security
strength of the derived key rather than the size of the derived key
(except for v1 encryption policies, which don't use HKDF).

Besides making things more flexible for userspace, this is needed in
order for the use of a KDF which only takes a 256-bit key to be
introduced into the fscrypt key hierarchy.  This will happen with
hardware-wrapped keys support, as all known hardware which supports that
feature uses an SP800-108 KDF using AES-256-CMAC, so the wrapped keys
are wrapped 256-bit AES keys.  Moreover, there is interest in fscrypt
supporting the same type of AES-256-CMAC based KDF in software as an
alternative to HKDF-SHA512.  There is no security problem with such
features, so fix the key length check to work properly with them.

Reviewed-by: Paul Crowley <paulcrowley@google.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210921030303.5598-1-ebiggers@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com>

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/fs/crypto/hkdf.c b/fs/crypto/hkdf.c
index e0ec21055505..7607d18b35fc 100644
--- a/fs/crypto/hkdf.c
+++ b/fs/crypto/hkdf.c
@@ -16,9 +16,14 @@
 
 /*
  * HKDF supports any unkeyed cryptographic hash algorithm, but fscrypt uses
- * SHA-512 because it is reasonably secure and efficient; and since it produces
- * a 64-byte digest, deriving an AES-256-XTS key preserves all 64 bytes of
- * entropy from the master key and requires only one iteration of HKDF-Expand.
+ * SHA-512 because it is well-established, secure, and reasonably efficient.
+ *
+ * HKDF-SHA256 was also considered, as its 256-bit security strength would be
+ * sufficient here.  A 512-bit security strength is "nice to have", though.
+ * Also, on 64-bit CPUs, SHA-512 is usually just as fast as SHA-256.  In the
+ * common case of deriving an AES-256-XTS key (512 bits), that can result in
+ * HKDF-SHA512 being much faster than HKDF-SHA256, as the longer digest size of
+ * SHA-512 causes HKDF-Expand to only need to do one iteration rather than two.
  */
 #define HKDF_HMAC_ALG		"hmac(sha512)"
 #define HKDF_HASHLEN		SHA512_DIGEST_SIZE