Re: [PATCH] fscrypt: don't use hardware offload Crypto API drivers
From: Maxime MERE
Date: Fri Jun 13 2025 - 05:03:00 EST
Hello,
On 6/11/25 22:58, Eric Biggers wrote:
To protect users from these buggy and seemingly unhelpful drivers that I
have no way of testing, let's make fscrypt not use them. Unfortunately
there is no direct support for doing so in the Crypto API, but we can
achieve something very close to it by disallowing algorithms that have
ASYNC, ALLOCATES_MEMORY, or KERN_DRIVER_ONLY set.
I agree that software drivers are more efficient and less prone to bugs
than hardware drivers. However, I would like to highlight the fact that
certain ST products (the STM32MP2x series) have features that allow the
loading of a secret key via an internal bus from a Secure OS to the CRYP
peripheral (usable by the kernel). This enables cryptographic operations
to be delegated to the non-secure side (the kernel) without exposing the
key.
If fscrypt no longer supports hardware drivers, then this type of
functionality could not be used, which I find unfortunate because it is
something that might interest users.
cheers,
Maxime