Re: Linux guest kernel threat model for Confidential Computing

Daniel P. Berrangé
2023-01-26T15:44:16Z

On Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 03:23:34PM +0100, Richard Weinberger wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 3:22 PM Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com> wrote:
> > Any virtual device exposed to the guest that can transfer potentially
> > sensitive data needs to have some form of guest controlled encryption
> > applied. For disks this is easy with FDE like LUKS, for NICs this is
> > already best practice for services by using TLS. Other devices may not
> > have good existing options for applying encryption.
>
> I disagree wrt. LUKS. The cryptography behind LUKS protects persistent data
> but not transport. If an attacker can observe all IO you better
> consult a cryptographer.
> LUKS has no concept of session keys or such, so the same disk sector will
> always get encrypted with the very same key/iv.

Yes, you're right, all the FDE cipher modes are susceptible to
time based analysis of I/O, so very far from ideal. You'll get
protection for your historically written confidential data at the
time a VM host is first compromised, but if (as) they retain long
term access to the host, confidentiality is increasingly undermined
the longer they can observe the ongoing I/O.

With regards,
Daniel
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