Re: [oss-security] CVE-2026-31431: CopyFail: linux local privilege scalation

[Milan Broz <gmazyland@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On 5/1/26 9:24 PM, Demi Marie Obenour wrote:
> Cryptsetup needs CAP_SYS_ADMIN, but iwd definitely does not, and
> presumably BlueZ should not use have it either.

In cryptsetup, AF_ALG is used exactly in places where it does
NOT need CAP_SYS_ADMIN.

While I agree that AF_ALG is misdesigned (specifically, indirect
loading of kernel modules just on non-privileged user request),
it is used in real scenarios.

I can write a long story why it is used in cryptsetup, but long
story short:

- It is used for benchmarking, where we actually need kernel crypto.

As it will be used in real dm-crypt mapping later, benchmarking
userspace lib just does not make sense.
(Requiring CAP_SYS_ADMIN here is not such a big issue, and it is
a very rough test - but useful for relative comparison, not for the
real numbers.)

- It is used in TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt compatibility (at least).

This format needs to decrypt the header (first sector) with
the same algorithms as it is later mapped through dm-crypt.
Not everything is available in userspace (we support all historic
versions) and using AF_ALG was very convenient here.

By removing AF_ALG, you will completely break this format support.
including some distros (I think Tails uses that :).

We are using userspace libraries, but removing AF_ALG would be a pain.
It can be done, but it requires time.

> Cryptsetup is a special case because there are times when it may not
> be safe to allocate memory: if I/O to the swap partition is suspended,
> and the kernel tries to page data out to it, the system may deadlock.
> So calling into arbitrary third-party libraries might not be the best
> idea.  Thankfully, Nettle should meet all of cryptsetup's requirements.

The cause with the swap is not such a big deal in reality.

Nettle is NO WAY for cryptsetup (we have support for it as an alternative
backend, but it cannot be the default). You do not see the whole picture.

Thanks,
Milan