Re: [PATCH v7 4/5] crypto: Add tls-cipher-suites object

[Laszlo Ersek <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 05/29/20 13:18, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 01:09:22PM +0200, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
>> On 05/28/20 19:31, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
>> (2) We need an actual commit message for this patch. How about the
>> following -- I have liberally stolen and edited comments that Daniel
>> made earlier in the Red Hat Bugzilla:
>>
>> ---v--- ---v--- ---v--- ---v---
>> On the host OS, various aspects of TLS operation are configurable. In
>> particular it is possible for the sysadmin to control the TLS
>> cipher/protocol algorithms that applications are permitted to use.
>>
>> * Any given crypto library has a built-in default priority list defined by
>>   the distro maintainer of the libary package (or by upstream).
>>
>> * The "crypto-policies" RPM (or equivalent host OS package) provides a
>>   config file such as "/etc/crypto-policies/config", where the sysadmin
>>   can set a high level (library-independent) policy.
>>
>>   The "update-crypto-policies --set" command (or equivalent) is used to
>>   translate the global policy to individual library representations,
>>   producing files such as "/etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/*.config". The
>>   generated files, if present, are loaded by the various crypto libraries
>>   to override their own built-in defaults.
>>
>>   For example, the GNUTLS library may read
>>   "/etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/gnutls.config".
>>
>> * A management application (or the QEMU user) may overide the system-wide
>>   crypto-policies config via their own config, if they need to diverge
>>   from the former.
>>
>> Thus the priority order is "QEMU user config" > "crypto-policies system
>> config" > "library built-in config".
>>
>> Introduce the "tls-cipher-suites" object for exposing the ordered list of
>> permitted TLS cipher suites from the host side to the firmware, via
>> fw_cfg. The list is represented as an array of IANA_TLS_CIPHER objects.
>> The firmware uses the IANA_TLS_CIPHER array for configuring guest-side
>> TLS, for example in UEFI HTTPS Boot.
>>
>> The priority at which the host-side policy is retrieved is given by the
>> "priority" property of the new object type. For example,
>> "priority=@SYSTEM" may be used to refer to
>> "/etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/gnutls.config" (given that QEMU uses
>> GNUTLS).
>> ---^--- ---^--- ---^--- ---^---
>>
>> (3) I think I have now at least formed an idea about where we should
>> document -fw_cfg / "gen_id" in the *manual*.
>>
>> The various -object types are already documented extensively; namely in
>> section "Generic object creation". Thus, I think we should document
>> "tls-cipher-suites" there -- near the already existent "-object tls-*"
>> ones.
>>
>> I suggest including a manual update to that effect. I think we can mostly
>> copy the suggested commit message into the manual as well.
>>
>> And then, we can include the new "-fw_cfg" command line option (with
>> "gen_id") *right there*. Consequently, we won't need to modify the
>> existent "-fw_cfg" documentation bits (about "file" and "string") under
>> section "Debug/Expert options".
>>
>> Dan: please comment!
> 
> I don't really have anything else to say. More docs == better

Thanks! Just wanted to be sure I wasn't suggesting something egregious.

Laszlo