Re: IMA and PQC

Stefan Berger
2026-02-26T19:22:01Z

On 2/26/26 1:32 PM, Eric Biggers wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2026 at 12:22:32PM -0500, Stefan Berger wrote:
>>> I see that IMA indeed never upgraded full file hashes to use
>>> 'struct ima_file_id'. Building a new feature that relies on this seems
>>> like a bad idea though, given that it's a security bug that makes the> IMA
>> protocol cryptographically ambiguous. I.e., it means that in IMA,
>>> when the contents of some file are signed, that signature is sometimes
>>> also valid for some other file contents which the signer didn't intend.
>>
>> You mean IMA should not sign the digest in the ima_file_id structure but
>> hash the ima_file_id structure in which this file digest is written into
>> (that we currently sign) and sign/verify this digest? And we would do this
>> to avoid two different files (with presumably different content) from having
>> the same hashes leading to the same signature? Which hashes (besides the
>> non-recommended ones) are so weak now that you must not merely sign a file's
>> hash?
>>
>> The problem with this is that older kernels (without patching) won't be able
>> to handle newer signatures.
>
> IMA needs to sign the entire ima_file_id structure, which is indeed what
> IMA already does when it uses that structure. (Well, actually it signs
> a hash of the struct, but that's best thought of an implementation
> detail of legacy signature algorithms that can only sign hashes. For a
> modern algorithm the whole struct should be passed instead.) Just IMA
> uses that structure only for fsverity hashes, which is a bug that makes
> the IMA protocol ambiguous. It needs to use ima_file_id consistently,
> otherwise a signed message sometimes corresponds to multiple unique file
> contents even without a break in the cryptographic hash function.

Before we jump into making changes on this old stuff I think it's good
to understand the underlying problem and the likelyhood of signatures
validating different data, such as a file and fsverity data. How likely
is this?

Assuming a strong hash I suppose that is not a concern with RSA because
here the digest is padded and then directly encrypted with the private
key. Upon verification (pub key decrypt) we would unpad and memcmp the
digests.

Again, assuming a strong hash: With ECDSA NIST P256 for example we have
a 32 byte signature. With a SHA512 being used for hashing for example we
would be doing a projection of a 64byte hash space to a 32byte signature
space with. Just by this projection of a much larger space into a
smaller space signatures that validate multiple input data could be a
problem. One 'easy' case where signatures for different input data is
the same (not exactly the same due to nonce involved the signature is
verifyable), albeit unlikely, is that there could be different input
data for the SHA512 that lead to the same 32bytes prefix, which is then
used after truncating the sha512 to the first 32 bytes for the ECDSA
signature, and this then leads to a signature that is verifyable for
different input data. So that's the 'simple' case at least for this
thought experiment for a non-expert.

Now what should still be difficult to do is given a file and a
hash-to-use that you can create fsverity content that leads to a hash
that in turn leads to a NIST-P256 signature that can be used for
signature verification(s) of the file and the totally different fsverity
data. Is this a problem that is as difficult to solve just as finding
different input data for a hash that leads to the same digest?

>
> Sure, when that bug is fixed, old kernels won't support the new
> signatures for files that use a full-file hash. But the same applies to
> starting to use a new signature algorithm, such as ML-DSA.
>
> - Eric
>