linux.git/include/crypto/aead.h, branch v6.12.80

crypto: remove CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS

2024-04-02T02:49:38+00:00

Remove support for the "Crypto usage statistics" feature
(CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS). This feature does not appear to have ever been
used, and it is harmful because it significantly reduces performance and
is a large maintenance burden.

Covering each of these points in detail:

1. Feature is not being used

Since these generic crypto statistics are only readable using netlink,
it's fairly straightforward to look for programs that use them. I'm
unable to find any evidence that any such programs exist. For example,
Debian Code Search returns no hits except the kernel header and kernel
code itself and translations of the kernel header:
https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=CRYPTOCFGA_STAT&literal=1&perpkg=1

The patch series that added this feature in 2018
(https://lore.kernel.org/linux-crypto/1537351855-16618-1-git-send-email-clabbe@baylibre.com/)
said "The goal is to have an ifconfig for crypto device." This doesn't
appear to have happened.

It's not clear that there is real demand for crypto statistics. Just
because the kernel provides other types of statistics such as I/O and
networking statistics and some people find those useful does not mean
that crypto statistics are useful too.

Further evidence that programs are not using CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS is that
it was able to be disabled in RHEL and Fedora as a bug fix
(https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/src/kernel/centos-stream-9/-/merge_requests/2947).

Even further evidence comes from the fact that there are and have been
bugs in how the stats work, but they were never reported. For example,
before Linux v6.7 hash stats were double-counted in most cases.

There has also never been any documentation for this feature, so it
might be hard to use even if someone wanted to.

2. CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS significantly reduces performance

Enabling CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS significantly reduces the performance of
the crypto API, even if no program ever retrieves the statistics. This
primarily affects systems with a large number of CPUs. For example,
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/2039576 reported
that Lustre client encryption performance improved from 21.7GB/s to
48.2GB/s by disabling CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS.

It can be argued that this means that CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS should be
optimized with per-cpu counters similar to many of the networking
counters. But no one has done this in 5+ years. This is consistent
with the fact that the feature appears to be unused, so there seems to
be little interest in improving it as opposed to just disabling it.

It can be argued that because CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS is off by default,
performance doesn't matter. But Linux distros tend to error on the side
of enabling options. The option is enabled in Ubuntu and Arch Linux,
and until recently was enabled in RHEL and Fedora (see above). So, even
just having the option available is harmful to users.

3. CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS is a large maintenance burden

There are over 1000 lines of code associated with CONFIG_CRYPTO_STATS,
spread among 32 files. It significantly complicates much of the
implementation of the crypto API. After the initial submission, many
fixes and refactorings have consumed effort of multiple people to keep
this feature "working". We should be spending this effort elsewhere.

Acked-by: Ard Biesheuvel
Acked-by: Corentin Labbe
Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu

crypto: aead - Add crypto_has_aead

2023-09-20T05:15:29+00:00

Add the helper crypto_has_aead.  This is meant to replace the
existing use of crypto_has_alg to locate AEAD algorithms.

Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu

crypto: aead - Count error stats differently

2023-03-14T09:06:41+00:00

Move all stat code specific to aead into the aead code.

While we're at it, change the stats so that bytes and counts
are always incremented even in case of error.  This allows the
reference counting to be removed as we can now increment the
counters prior to the operation.

After the operation we simply increase the error count if necessary.
This is safe as errors can only occur synchronously (or rather,
the existing code already ignored asynchronous errors which are
only visible to the callback function).

Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu

crypto: aead - fix inaccurate documentation

2023-01-20T10:29:31+00:00

The AEAD documentation conflates associated data and authentication
tags: the former (along with the ciphertext) is authenticated by the
latter. Fix the doc accordingly.

Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel 
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu

crypto: api - Replace kernel.h with the necessary inclusions

2021-12-17T05:59:48+00:00

When kernel.h is used in the headers it adds a lot into dependency hell,
especially when there are circular dependencies are involved.

Replace kernel.h inclusion with the list of what is really being used.

Signed-off-by: Andy Shevchenko 
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu

crypto: header - Fix spelling errors

2021-05-28T06:21:08+00:00

Fix some spelling mistakes in comments:
cipherntext ==> ciphertext
syncronise ==> synchronise
feeded ==> fed

Signed-off-by: Zhen Lei 
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu

crypto: api - check for ERR pointers in crypto_destroy_tfm()

2021-03-12T13:04:01+00:00

Given that crypto_alloc_tfm() may return ERR pointers, and to avoid
crashes on obscure error paths where such pointers are presented to
crypto_destroy_tfm() (such as [0]), add an ERR_PTR check there
before dereferencing the second argument as a struct crypto_tfm
pointer.

[0] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-crypto/000000000000de949705bc59e0f6@google.com/

Reported-by: syzbot+12cf5fbfdeba210a89dd@syzkaller.appspotmail.com
Reviewed-by: Eric Biggers 
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel 
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu

crypto: aead - add crypto_aead_driver_name()

2020-11-06T03:29:10+00:00

Add crypto_aead_driver_name(), which is analogous to
crypto_skcipher_driver_name().

Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers 
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu

mm, treewide: rename kzfree() to kfree_sensitive()

2020-08-07T18:33:22+00:00

As said by Linus:

  A symmetric naming is only helpful if it implies symmetries in use.
  Otherwise it's actively misleading.

  In "kzalloc()", the z is meaningful and an important part of what the
  caller wants.

  In "kzfree()", the z is actively detrimental, because maybe in the
  future we really _might_ want to use that "memfill(0xdeadbeef)" or
  something. The "zero" part of the interface isn't even _relevant_.

The main reason that kzfree() exists is to clear sensitive information
that should not be leaked to other future users of the same memory
objects.

Rename kzfree() to kfree_sensitive() to follow the example of the recently
added kvfree_sensitive() and make the intention of the API more explicit.
In addition, memzero_explicit() is used to clear the memory to make sure
that it won't get optimized away by the compiler.

The renaming is done by using the command sequence:

  git grep -w --name-only kzfree |\
  xargs sed -i 's/kzfree/kfree_sensitive/'

followed by some editing of the kfree_sensitive() kerneldoc and adding
a kzfree backward compatibility macro in slab.h.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fs/crypto/inline_crypt.c needs linux/slab.h]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix fs/crypto/inline_crypt.c some more]

Suggested-by: Joe Perches 
Signed-off-by: Waiman Long 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Acked-by: David Howells 
Acked-by: Michal Hocko 
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner 
Cc: Jarkko Sakkinen 
Cc: James Morris 
Cc: "Serge E. Hallyn" 
Cc: Joe Perches 
Cc: Matthew Wilcox 
Cc: David Rientjes 
Cc: Dan Carpenter 
Cc: "Jason A . Donenfeld" 
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200616154311.12314-3-longman@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

crypto: aead - improve documentation for scatterlist layout

2020-03-12T12:00:13+00:00

Properly document the scatterlist layout for AEAD ciphers.

Reported-by: Gilad Ben-Yossef 
Cc: Stephan Mueller 
Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers 
Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu