Re: [PATCH v8 0/9] crypto: HCTR2 support

[Eric Biggers <ebiggers@kernel.org>]

On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 05:23:50PM +0000, Nathan Huckleberry wrote:
> HCTR2 is a length-preserving encryption mode that is efficient on
> processors with instructions to accelerate AES and carryless
> multiplication, e.g. x86 processors with AES-NI and CLMUL, and ARM
> processors with the ARMv8 Crypto Extensions.
> 
> HCTR2 is specified in https://ia.cr/2021/1441 "Length-preserving encryption
> with HCTR2" which shows that if AES is secure and HCTR2 is instantiated
> with AES, then HCTR2 is secure.  Reference code and test vectors are at
> https://github.com/google/hctr2.
> 
> As a length-preserving encryption mode, HCTR2 is suitable for applications
> such as storage encryption where ciphertext expansion is not possible, and
> thus authenticated encryption cannot be used.  Currently, such applications
> usually use XTS, or in some cases Adiantum.  XTS has the disadvantage that
> it is a narrow-block mode: a bitflip will only change 16 bytes in the
> resulting ciphertext or plaintext.  This reveals more information to an
> attacker than necessary.
> 
> HCTR2 is a wide-block mode, so it provides a stronger security property: a
> bitflip will change the entire message.  HCTR2 is somewhat similar to
> Adiantum, which is also a wide-block mode.  However, HCTR2 is designed to
> take advantage of existing crypto instructions, while Adiantum targets
> devices without such hardware support.  Adiantum is also designed with
> longer messages in mind, while HCTR2 is designed to be efficient even on
> short messages.
> 
> The first intended use of this mode in the kernel is for the encryption of
> filenames, where for efficiency reasons encryption must be fully
> deterministic (only one ciphertext for each plaintext) and the existing CBC
> solution leaks more information than necessary for filenames with common
> prefixes.
> 
> HCTR2 uses two passes of an ε-almost-∆-universal hash function called
> POLYVAL and one pass of a block cipher mode called XCTR.  POLYVAL is a
> polynomial hash designed for efficiency on modern processors and was
> originally specified for use in AES-GCM-SIV (RFC 8452).  XCTR mode is a
> variant of CTR mode that is more efficient on little-endian machines.
> 
> This patchset adds HCTR2 to Linux's crypto API, including generic
> implementations of XCTR and POLYVAL, hardware accelerated implementations
> of XCTR and POLYVAL for both x86-64 and ARM64, a templated implementation
> of HCTR2, and an fscrypt policy for using HCTR2 for filename encryption.
> 

Thanks, this series looks good now.  I've also tested it on x86_64 and arm64.

Herbert, I think this series is ready to be applied, when you're ready for it.

- Eric