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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans - move timing.c out of the library

by Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard

Hi all, So personally I'm quite strongly inclined to remove timing.c from the library, and move most of its content elsewhere, with one possible exception: > - mbedtls_timing_set_delay() and mbedtls_timing_get_delay() are an example > implementation (only for Unix and Windows) of timer callbacks for DTLS, only > used in programs/ssl/*.c Since timer callbacks are a hard requirement for using DTLS, and it seems quite desirable to be able to support DTLS out of the box at least on some platforms, I was thinking this pair of function (and the associated context type) could be kept in the library, in a new module that would be called something like ssl_dtls_timer.c. This would be somewhat similar to ssl_cookies.c, ssl_tickets.c and ssl_cache.c: they all provide implementations of callbacks that can be used with the main SSL/(D)TLS module, but users are obviously free to compile them out and use their own implementation if the one we provide does not meet their needs. As it happens, all three of these support modules work best if MBEDTLS_HAVE_TIME is defined, but can work without it. For the new ssl_dtls_timer.c I'm suggesting, the situation would be different: the module could have a hard dependency on MBEDTLS_HAVE_TIME, but work better on selected platforms (say, C11, POSIX and Windows) where we know how to access sub-second timing information. (Or alternatively, have a hard dependency on C11-or-Posix-or-Windows.) For the record, mbedtls_ssl_conf_handshake_timeout() accepts timeout values in milliseconds, but recommended values for use over the general internet start at 1 second: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6347#section-4.2.4.1 So it might make sense to provide this module even when we only have second resolution - we'd just have to work out how the timer function would behave when passed sub-second values. (My first thought it rounding up to the next second would be quite OK.) What do you'all think? Personnally, I don't have a strong opinion between the three following options, though I have a slight preference for the first one: 1. Provide ssl_dtls_timer.c in the library with hard dep on HAVE_TIME and enhanced features with C11/Posix/Windows. 2. Provide ssl_dtls_timer.c in the library with hard dep on C11/Posix/Windows. 3. Move it all out of the library and let the thing live somewhere under programs/ as it's only used by example/testing programs. Note though that we could also choose to go with option 3 for Mbed TLS 3.0, see how it goes, and later switch to option 2 or 1 if we want, as adding modules can be done at any time. (In the same vein, we could start with 2 and switch to 1 at any time as well.) Regards, Manuel.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans - move timing.c out of the library

by Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard

Hi Torsten, [I'm assuming didn't mean to reply on the list and not just to me, so I'm replying on the list.] > On 20/04/2020 11:51, Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard via mbed-tls wrote: >> For reference, this module includes the following functions, which are used >> in the following places: >> >> - mbedtls_timing_hardclock() implements cycle counting (on selected >> architectures, not including M-class), used only in >> programs/test/benchmark.c > > I used mbedtls_timing_hardclock() for my own benchmarking experiments on > Linux and Windows, but couldn't get it to run on the target machine. So > I've use my own ms counter instead. So, it could be easily removed as > part of the library. > Good to know, thanks for sharing this data point. > Question: How do you want to do the benchmarking instead? With the same > code, but outside the library? > Yes, I was thinking that the functions that are only used in benchmark.c could be defined in benchmark.c, and the functions that are only used in udp_proxy.c could be defined in udp_proxy.c. (Or actually for the latter, we might want to start using them in ssl_client2.c and ssl_server2.c as well, as including millisecond timestamps in the debug output would be usefull to debug some issues. In that case, we'll probably put those functions in a new file, used by udp_proxy, ssl_client2 and ssl_server2 (just like query_config.c is currently used by ssl_client2, ssl_server2 and query_compile_time_config).) Regards, Manuel.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] Some thoughts towards mbed TLS 3.0

by Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard

Hi Torsten, > this will be a long mail. Sorry for that. > On the contrary, thank you so much for this extensive and well though-out feedback, that's very helpful! I'll try to complement Gilles's reply, and skip the points he already answered unless I have something to add, as I'm generally in full agreement with what he wrote. > 3. For certification and evaluation purposes I need some test vectors > for each crypto function on target. While I know about the > comprehensive self-test program I'm now talking about built-in > functions like mbedtls_sha512_self_test(), etc to be enabled with > #define MBEDTLS_SELF_TEST. > > These self-tests are very different in coverage. For SHA-384 and > SHA-512 they are fine, for HMAC-SHA-384 and HMAC-SHA-512 I couldn't > find any as well as for HKDF-HMAC-SHA-256 (in RFC 5869) or > HKDF-HMAC-SHA-384/512 (official test vectors difficult to find). > AES-CTR and AES-XTS are only tested with key length 128 bit, not with > 256 bit. AES-CCM is not tested with 256 bit and even for 128 bit, > the test vector from the standard NIST SP 800-38C with long > additional data is not used. > The builtin self-test for GCM is the best I've seen with mbedtls: > all three key lengths are tested as well as the IUF-interface and > the comfort function. Bravo! > Indeed so far we don't have clear guidelines on self-test functions, and we should try to have more consistency here. Since this is incremental, backwards-compatible improvements, it can be done at any time (unlike some API improvements that can only be done when preparing major versions). Contributions in this area are certainly welcome! > 7. While at Elliptic Curve Cryptography: I assume that some of you > know that projectives coordinates as outer interface to ECC are > dangerous, see David Naccache, Nigel P. Smart, Jacques Stern: > Projective Coordinates Leak, Eurocrypt 2004, pp. 257–267. Yes, and as it happens this was revisited recently by researchers, and brought back to our attention: https://tls.mbed.org/tech-updates/security-advisories/mbedtls-security-advi… > you have Jacobian coordinates, i.e. projective coordinates, as outer > interface. In the comment, its is noted that only the affine part is > used, but can this be assured? In all circumstances? > In practice, I'm pretty confident this is the case, because both ecp_normalize_jac() and ecp_normalize_mxz() set Z to 1, these functions are always called before returning data, and if we forgot to call those functions, we'd get incorrect X and Y coordinates and fail unit test and interop tests. But as a matter of principle, I agree that exposing Jacobian coordinates in the API was a poor decision. Fortunately, we already intended to start phasing out the existing ECP interface in 3.0 (to which extend exactly is still to be discussed), and in the future is should be fully removed in favour of the PSA Crypto API, which doesn't have this problem. > 8. In my personal opinion the definition > [...] > mbedtls_ecp_keypair; > > is dangerous. Why not differentiate between private and public key > and domain parameters? I agree, and I think it's a generally accepted opinion in the crypto implementation community that private and public keys should be clearly distinguished from one another, for example by using distinct types (in typed languages). This is by the way a long-standing problem that existed in the RSA module from the start, and when ECC was added it followed a similar pattern. Again, I think the transition of the PSA Crypto API is going to be the answer here, as it will provide much cleaner key management. > 9. Regarding ECC examples: I found it very difficult that there isn't > a single example with known test vectors as in the relevant crypto > standards, i.e. FIPS 186-4 and ANSI X9.62-2005, with raw public > keys. What I mean are (defined) curves, public key value Q=(Qx,Qy) > and known signature values r and s. In the example ecdsa.c you > generate your own key pair and read/write the signature in > serialized form. In the example programs/pkey/pk_sign.c and > pk_verify.c you use a higher interface pk.h and keys in PEM format. > > So, it took me a while for a program to verify (all) known answer > tests in the standards (old standards as ANSI X9.62 1998 have more > detailed known answer tests). One needs this interface with raw > public keys for example for CAVP tests, see The FIPS 186-4 Elliptic > Curve Digital Signature Algorithm Validation System (ECDSA2VS). > > 11. In the moment, there is no single known answer tests for ECDSA > (which could be activated with #define MBEDTLS_SELF_TEST). I > wouldn't say that you need an example for every curve and hash > combination, as it is done in ECDSA2VS CAVP, but one example for > one of the NIST curves and one for Curve25519 and - if I have a > wish free - one for Brainpool would be fine. And this would solve > #9 above. > I might be misunderstanding, but isn't the function ecdsa_prim_test_vectors() in tests/suites/test_suite_ecdsa.function close to what you're looking for? I mean, except for the fact that it's not in the self-test function, and that it's using data from RFCs rather than from NIST or ANSI? But I agree this is a bit messy and could be made cleaner. Also, if you ever feel like contributing your dream self-test function for ECDSA as PR, this will be a very welcome contribution! > 13. Feature request: Since it was irrelevant for my task (only > verification, no generation) I didn't have a detailed look a your > ECC side-channel countermeasures. But obviously you use the same > protected code for scalar multiplication in verify and sign, > right? Wouldn't it be possible to use Shamir's trick in > verification with fast unprotected multi-scalar multiplication. In > the moment, mbedtls_ecdsa_verify is a factor 4-5 slower than > mbedtls_ecdsa_sign, while OpenSSLs verify is faster than sign. > Yes, this was done to save both on code size and developer time, but I agree it's suboptimal for performance. As Gilles wrote, as a general rule we tend to favour code size and security/maintainability over performance, but in that instance if we provide an option for a verify-only ECDSA build (which I agree we should), then we're likely to reach smaller code size by having a standalone unprotected implementation of multi-scalar multiplication, so that would probably be a great option: better performance _and_ smaller code. Unfortunately we're already quite busy with other things, so this kind of optimisation will probably have to wait for a bit more, but we're taking good note of the suggestion and will try to implement it in the future. Again, thanks for this comprehensive and useful feedback. Regards, Manuel.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans - move timing.c out of the library

by Torsten Schuetze

On 20/04/2020 11:51, Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard via mbed-tls wrote: > [ Context: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ ] > > Currently the crypto library includes a module called timing.c, enabled by > default in config.h (but disabled by config.py baremetal), containing various > functions related to timing (not to be confused with the time abstration > present in the platorm module). > > In Mbed TLS 3.0, as part of our effort to clean up and minimize our API, > we're considering removing (parts of) this module from the library, and > moving its parts to a variety of other places, such as example programs (or > a library/file shared by them, like the current query_config mechanism). > > For reference, this module includes the following functions, which are used in > the following places: > > - mbedtls_timing_hardclock() implements cycle counting (on selected > architectures, not including M-class), used only in > programs/test/benchmark.c I used mbedtls_timing_hardclock() for my own benchmarking experiments on Linux and Windows, but couldn't get it to run on the target machine. So I've use my own ms counter instead. So, it could be easily removed as part of the library. Question: How do you want to do the benchmarking instead? With the same code, but outside the library? Torsten

6 years, 2 months

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3.0 plans - move net.c out of the library

by Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard

Hi all, [ Context: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ ] Currently the SSL/TLS library includes a module called net_sockets.c (formerly net.c), enabled by default in config.h (but disabled by config.py baremetal), that contains some networking functions based on POSIX or Windows sockets, including functions suitable for use as I/O callbacks with our SSL/TLS modules. Those functions are used only in example/testing programs, but nowhere in the library itself. In Mbed TLS 3.0, as part of our effort to clean up and minimize our API, we're considering removing (parts of) this module from the library, and moving its parts to a variety of other places, such as example programs (or a library/file shared by them, like the current query_config mechanism). Reasons for removing this module from the library include: - overall the module is less portable and perhaps of lesser quality than the rest of the library - it's currently entirely untested on Windows (despite being very platform-specific) - there are often confusions about whether the module is meant to be a general-purpose networking library, or just provide basic support for our example and test, as well a simple prototypes - it's not our core area of expertise, let's do one thing and to it well Reasons for keeping (parts of) it in the library include: - having mbedtls_net_recv{,_timeout}() and mbedtls_net_send() available right in the library makes it easier to test and develop prototype - this module is listed as a component in our high-level design document [2], so perhaps removing it from the library can be seen as a bigger change? [2]: https://tls.mbed.org/high-level-design What do you think? Should we remove the entire module from the library, keep it all, or just keep some parts? In that case, which parts and where? Regards, Manuel.

6 years, 2 months

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3.0 plans - move timing.c out of the library

by Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard

[ Context: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ ] Currently the crypto library includes a module called timing.c, enabled by default in config.h (but disabled by config.py baremetal), containing various functions related to timing (not to be confused with the time abstration present in the platorm module). In Mbed TLS 3.0, as part of our effort to clean up and minimize our API, we're considering removing (parts of) this module from the library, and moving its parts to a variety of other places, such as example programs (or a library/file shared by them, like the current query_config mechanism). For reference, this module includes the following functions, which are used in the following places: - mbedtls_timing_hardclock() implements cycle counting (on selected architectures, not including M-class), used only in programs/test/benchmark.c - mbedtls_timing_get_timer() is a millisecond counter (only for Unix and Windows), used only in programs/test/udp_proxy.c - mbedtls_set_alarm() is an abstraction of alarm() (only for Unix and Windows), used only in programs/test/benchmark.c - mbedtls_timing_set_delay() and mbedtls_timing_get_delay() are an example implementation (only for Unix and Windows) of timer callbacks for DTLS, only used in programs/ssl/*.c Reasons for removing this module from the library include: - overall the module is less portable and of lesser quality than the rest of the library - it's also very hard to test and we've lost a lot of time and energy to that, with very limited success - it doesn't really belong in libmbedcrypto - it's not our core area of expertise, let's do one thing and to it well Reasons for keeping (parts of) it in the library include: - for mbedtls_timing_set_delay() and mbedtls_timing_get_delay(): they're convenient to have for DTLS examples and prototyping, we could keep them in some place in libmbedtls (not libmbedcrypto). What do you think? Should we remove the entire module from the library, or keep some parts? In that case, which parts and where should they live? Regards, Manuel.

6 years, 2 months

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3.0 plans - move certs.c out of the library

by Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard

Hi all, In this new installment of "let's discuss ideas for Mbed TLS 3.0" [1]: should we move certs.c out of the library? [1]: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ Currently the X.509 library includes test certificates and keys, which are enabled by default in config.h - `MBEDTLS_CERTS_C`. These are used in the following places: - in library/x509.c in mbedtls_x509_self_test() - in tests/suites/test_suite_ssl.function - in programs/fuzz and programs/ssl In Mbed TLS 3.0, as part of our effort to clean up and minimize our API, we'd like to remove certs.h and the certificates it contains from the library (except perhaps one static cert for mbedtls_x509_self_test()). Tests and example programs that need built-in certificates could still get them using any mechanism, included a file certs.c similar to the current one - but this file would no longer live in library or be included when building libmbedx509. Reasons include: - Including test certificates and keys in the library provides little value, as users will want to use their own certificates and keys anyway. - Shipping private keys as part of the library is bad practice, even under the `mbedtls_test_` sub-namespace. There's a slight risk that some users could use them for prototyping and then inadvertently keep using unsafe private keys in production. If you disagree or have concerns, please speak up! Also, if want to suggest ideas for where the replacement to library/certs.c should live or how it could be maintained, now's a good time as well! Regards, Manuel.

6 years, 2 months

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Session resumption + PSKs in Mbed TLS 3.X

by Hanno Becker

Hi all, I would like to bring up the following: (How) Shall the APIs for PSKs and TLS session resumption be modified in Mbed TLS 3.0? The motivation for this question is the consolidation of PSKs, ticket-based resumption and session-id-based resumption in TLS 1.3. Now, while there will be no TLS 1.3 support in Mbed TLS 3.0 as it stands, I think it would be beneficial to make the API amenable to TLS 1.3 as much as possible already now. Finding the right API here is non-trivial, and I'll describe first how the current API works and how TLS 1.2 and 1.3 differ, before making suggestions on how the Mbed TLS 3 API might look like. The mail is therefore quite long, but I hope you'll bear with me. # Session Resumption in Mbed TLS 2.X Recall how resumption works in Mbed TLS 2.X on the client: 1. Establish a connection as usual 2. Store established session for later re-use `mbedtls_ssl_session_save()` saves connection parameters relevant for session resumption in an instance of `mbedtls_ssl_session`. Optional: 2.1: Serialize session for offline storage 2.2: Deserialize session 3. Loading a stored session `mbedtls_ssl_session_load()` is called on the stored session after initialization and before running the handshake via `mbedtls_ssl_handshake()`. 4. Connect using stored session Run `mbedtls_ssl_handshake()` as usual. To my knowledge, the following is transparent to the user: * The means by which resumption is achieved, which can be either id- or ticket-based. * Whether the session was resumed or not - there is a silent fallback to a full handshake when session resumption is rejected by the server. On the server, ticket- and id-based resumption are configured independently as follows: - ID-based resumption is controlled via `mbedtls_ssl_conf_session_cache()` - Ticket-based resumption is controlled via `mbedtls_ssl_conf_session_tickets_cb()`. # PSKs in Mbed TLS 2.X Coming to PSKs: First, recall that, under the hood, resumed connections establish a master secret purely on the basis of a previous master secret, without resorting to asymmetric crypto. The same is true for PSK-based connections, and this observation is embodied in TLS 1.3 which, as mentioned, consolidates resumption and PSKs. In TLS 1.2, though, PSKs and session resumption are different, and consequently Mbed TLS handles them through a separate API `mbedtls_ssl_conf_psk()`, which takes the PSK identifier and the PSK itself. Side-question: Should this apply to the SSL configuration or the SSL context? It seems to me that somebody might want to run multiple PSK-based connections with different PSKs, but same configuration otherwise. At the moment, this would require a configuration per connection. Maybe this decision of what belongs at the level of the config could be thoroughly discussed independently? # PSKs in TLS 1.3 In TLS 1.3, all kinds of resumptions are hanlded ander the umbrella of PSKs: The client offers PSK identities in its ClientHello, the server picks one or leaves it, and the master secret for the connection is derived from the PSK associated with the PSK identity. Underlying this is some form of translation `PSK-Identity -> PSK` on the server which allows to derive the PSK from the PSK identity. How this mapping is realized is entirely implementation-specific, but it can take at least the following forms, giving back all forms of session resumption: - 'PSK Identity -> PSK' via database lookup: This subsumes classical PSKs and ID-based resumption, since the data necessary to resume a session is stored on the server. - 'PSK Identity -> PSK' via AEAD: The PSK can be encoded in the PSK identity itself by using some authenticated encryption of the PSK as the PSK identity, the key for which resides on the server. This subsumes Ticket-based resumption. There are the following noteworthy differences, though: 1. In TLS 1.2, the server provides a 'PSK identity hint' and the client picks a particular PSK identity. In TLS 1.3, the client offers a _list_ of PSKs, and the server picks one or none. 2. In TLS 1.2, the server can issue only a single session ticket. In TLS 1.3, the server can issue as many session tickets as he wishes, and the client can use any of those for later session resumption. This has the following consequences for the API: 1. The PSK-configuration API must allow the configuration of multiple PSKs on the client. 2. There must be a means to export more than one session ticket for later resumption. # API considerations for Mbed TLS 3.X ## Part 1: Load/Save API In essence, keep the flow of `mbedtls_ssl_session_load/save()`, but make the following adjustments. Whether the target structure remains `mbedtls_ssl_session` and how it looks like internally isn't relevant at this point and is up to discussion. 1. It must be possible 'save' a session multiple times, which in TLS 1.3 amounts to exporting the tickets issued by the server one-by-one. This can be realized in a variety of ways, for example: - Allow calling `mbedtls_ssl_session_save()` multiple times, and modify its semantics from the idempotent nature of Mbed TLS 2.X to iterating through the available tickets, and returning an error when no more tickets are available. This has the benefit that it likely requires no code change for users migrating from Mbed TLS 2.X, since a change is needed only when an application stores a single session multiple times, which could be done by calling `mbedtls_ssl_session_save()` multiple times before, while now one would need to call it once and manually replicate the obtained session structure. On the negative side, this wastes memory for applications not interested in session resumption, or those that only need a single ticket. We don't want the server to be able to flood the client with arbitrarily many tickets. - Allow registering a callback that's triggered whenever a new ticket arrives. The drawback of this is that it is larger deviation from the Mbed TLS 2.X API. On the positive side, applications that don't need tickets, or only need a limited number of such, can simply drop further tickets and thereby prevent allocating RAM for them. 2. It must be possible to 'load' multiple sessions, meaning that the client should offer any of them to the server for resumption. ## Part 2: Consolidation with PSK Make it possible to setup an `mbedtls_ssl_session` (or whatever it will be called) structure manually from an externally PSK provisioned PSK, and allow loading this session for resumption as above, via one of potentially many calls to `mbedtls_ssl_session_load()`. There are multiple variants to this, for example: 1. Make `mbedtls_ssl_session` transparent so users can build it manually by filling the respective fields. 2. Provide a helper API to build a session from a PSK. The old API `mbedtls_ssl_conf_psk()` can then be _derived_ from this for convenience, building a session from the provided PSK and loading it, in a single API. Before going into further details and making the mail even longer: What do you think of this approach? Do you see alternatives? Best, Hanno IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] Some thoughts towards mbed TLS 3.0

by Gilles Peskine

Wow! First, thanks for this extensive feedback! That's very helpful, and appreciated. I'm going to reply to a few points. On a general note, you can see headlines for the main topics we're currently planning to work on in the Mbed TLS roadmap at https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/roadmap/ . Please note that everything I write is based on current plans, which may change through the TrustedFirmware planning process or if real life shows that a current plan is not doable. Over time, we're transitioning the API for the crypto part of the library from the current mbedtls_xxx functions to psa_xxx, which have a somewhat different philosophy: less exposure of internals, more protection against misuse, no reliance on malloc. Mbed TLS 3.0 will start the transition. On 14/04/2020 21:10, Torsten Schuetze via mbed-tls wrote 1. I really missed an Initialize, Update, Finalize (IUF) interface for CCM. For GCM, we have mbedtls_gcm_init(), mbedtls_gcm_setkey(), mbedtls_gcm_starts(), mbedtls_gcm_update() iterated, mbedtls_gcm_finish(), mbedtls_gcm_free() or the comfort functions mbedtls_gcm_crypt_and_tag() and mbedtls_gcm_auth_decrypt(). For CCM, only mbedtls_ccm_init(), mbedtls_ccm_setkey(), mbedtls_ccm_encrypt_and_tag() or mbedtls_ccm_auth_decrypt() and mbedtls_ccm_free(). With this interface it was only possible to encrypt and tag 128 kByte on my target system, while with GCM I could encrypt much larger files. see Github issue #662 and my comment there In Mbed TLS 3.0, mbedtls_ccm_xxx() will not be a public interface anymore. We are planning to add support for multipart CCM in the psa_aead_xxx() interface (the prototypes are already in psa/crypto.h but their implementation is planned for some time in the next few months). We are not currently planning to add support for multipart CCM through mbedtls_cipher_xxx(), which in Mbed TLS 3 will be legacy functions. However, we would probably accept such support if it was contributed externally. 2. The next step, of course, is to integrate this into the higher mbedtls_cipher layer. Regarding higher, abstract layers: I often didn't understand which interface I was supposed to use. In general, I like to use the lowest available interface, for example, #include "mbedtls/sha512.h" when I want to use sha512. However, if I need HMAC-SHA-512 or HKDF-HMAC-SHA-512 then I have to use the interface in md.h. For hash functions this is fine. Almost all hash functions are supported via md.h. (I missed SHA-512/256 which is sometimes preferable to SHA-256 on 64bit systems). But with cipher.h, I can only access Chacha20Poly1305 and AES-GCM, not AES-CCM. In Mbed TLS 3, there will generally be a single public layer. Exposing lower layers helps with code size on resource-constrained devices, but it also has downsides, including locking down the APIs. 4. That I couldn't configure AES-256 only, i.e. without AES-128 and AES-192, was to be expected (and the code overhead is not that much). But in modern modes of operations nobody needs AES decryption, only the forward direction. Sometimes modern publications as Schwabe/Stoffelen "All the AES you need on Cortex-M3 and M4" provide only the forward direction. So, it would be fine if one could configure an AES (ECB) encryption only without decryption. Of course, this is only possible if we don't use CBC mode, etc. This wouldn't only save the AES decryption code but also the rather large T-tables for decryption. For information, there is a branch of Mbed TLS called "baremetal", forked from Mbed TLS 2.16, which you can find on GitHub: https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbedtls/blob/baremetal . This branch is optimized for small code size, sometimes at the expense of speed and often at the expense of features. It has build options MBEDTLS_AES_ONLY_ENCRYPT and MBEDTLS_AES_ONLY_128_BIT_KEY_LENGTH. However I would not recommend using it in production because Arm (who still maintain this branch even after Mbed TLS itself has moved to TrustedFirmware) does not make any promise of stability. A feature that you rely on may be removed without notice. I mention this branch because eventually, we do plan to port the improvements that don't sacrifice features to the Mbed TLS development branch. I can't give a timeline for this however. With the current Mbed TLS, if you don't use CBC, I think you can save some code in aes.o by defining MBEDTLS_AES_DECRYPT_ALT and MBEDTLS_AES_SETKEY_DEC_ALT and providing functions mbedtls_aes_setkey_dec() and mbedtls_internal_aes_decrypt() that do nothing. 5. Regarding AES or better the AES context-type definition [snip] 6. In general, the contexts of mbedTLS are rather full of implementation specific details. Most extreme is mbedtls_ecp_group in ecp.h. Wouldn't it be clearer if one separates the standard things (domain parameters in this case) from implementation specific details? As a general design principle, context types in Mbed TLS 3 will be opaque. This will let us, for example, redesign mbedtls_aes_context and mbedtls_cipher_context. 9. Regarding ECC examples: I found it very difficult that there isn't a single example with known test vectors as in the relevant crypto standards, i.e. FIPS 186-4 and ANSI X9.62-2005, with raw public keys. What I mean are (defined) curves, public key value Q=(Qx,Qy) and known signature values r and s. In the example ecdsa.c you generate your own key pair and read/write the signature in serialized form. In the example programs/pkey/pk_sign.c and pk_verify.c you use a higher interface pk.h and keys in PEM format. So, it took me a while for a program to verify (all) known answer tests in the standards (old standards as ANSI X9.62 1998 have more detailed known answer tests). One needs this interface with raw public keys for example for CAVP tests, see The FIPS 186-4 Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm Validation System (ECDSA2VS). 11. In the moment, there is no single known answer tests for ECDSA (which could be activated with #define MBEDTLS_SELF_TEST). I wouldn't say that you need an example for every curve and hash combination, as it is done in ECDSA2VS CAVP, but one example for one of the NIST curves and one for Curve25519 and - if I have a wish free - one for Brainpool would be fine. And this would solve #9 above. I don't get the point here. ECDSA is randomized, so you can't have a known answer test. The test suite does have known answer tests for deterministic ECDSA. 10. While debugging mbedtls_ecdsa_verify() in my example program, I found out, that the ECDSA, ECC and MPI operations are very, let's say, nested. So, IMHO there is a lot of function call overhead and special cases. It would be interesting to see what's the performance impact of a clean, straight-forward mbedtls_ecdsa_verify without restartable code, etc. to the current one. As far as I remember, the refactoring done to add the restartable code had no measurable impact on performance. What does have a significant impact on performance is that the bignum module uses malloc all the time. We would like to completely rewrite bignum operations at some point during the 3.x series, not only for performance but also because its design makes it hard not to leak information through side channels. 12. Just a minor issue: I only needed ECDSA signature verification, therefore I only included MBEDTLS_ASN1_PARSE_C. But it is not possible to compile without MBEDTLS_ASN1_WRITE_C needed for ECDSA signature generation. I'm not sure if I've written it down anywhere, but I'd like to remove the dependency of ECDSA on ASN1 altogether. Parsing and writing a SEQUENCE of two INTEGERs can be done with ad hoc code. Likewise for what little ASN1 the RSA module uses. And then asn1*.o can move out of libmbedcrypto and libpsacrypto, and into libmbedx509 where it belongs. Having only signature verification would be useful, indeed. That may happen with the bignum rewrite I mentioned above, if signature verification ends up using some faster non-constant-time code (this is also relevant for #13). 14. Design question: In the moment, both GCM and CCM use their own implementation of CTR encryption which is very simple. But then we have mbedtls_aes_crypt_ctr() in aes.h which is very simple, too. Let's assume at one day we have a performance optimized CTR encryption (for example from Schwabe & Stoffelen) with all fancy stuff like counter-mode caching etc. Then this would have to be replaced at three places at minimum. While isn't the code at this point more modularized? Is this a dedicated design decision? Having a single implementation of CTR is on the PSA roadmap because if there's a hardware accelerator that does it, we want to use it everywhere it's relevant. In Mbed TLS (or more precisely in its ancestor PolarSSL, if not _its_ ancestor XySSL), there was a conscious design decision to make each .c file as independent from the others as possible, which explains why camellia_ctr is completely independent from aes_ctr. But I don't know why ccm and gcm reimplement ctr. Why do I find at so many places for( i = 0; i < 16; i++ ) y[i] ^= b[i]; instead of a fast 128-bit XOR macro with 32bit aligned data? As a programmer who doesn't write compilers, I think this is the right way to xor 16 bytes, and it's the compiler's job to optimize it to word or vector operations if possible. Admittedly this does mean the compiler has to know that the data is well-aligned, which can be hard to guarantee and easy to forget. So, that's it for the moment. I hope I could give some hints for the further development of mbedTLS. Feel free to discuss any of the above points. It's clear to me that we cannot have both: clear and simple to understand code and performance records. Right. Also maintainable code and minimal code size, because minimal code size comes from letting the application developer #ifdef out everything that they don't care about, but this is a nightmare to test. It's one of the topics we're thinking about for Mbed TLS 3 and beyond. In general, Mbed TLS is primarily targeted at embedded systems, and is likely to privilege 1. security (including side channel resistance) and 2. code size. This doesn't mean that we don't care about performance, just that it isn't our top priority. That being said, we also do have some code that's optimized for performance (without compromising security) and not code size: the library already includes X25519 from Project Everest (https://project-everest.github.io/) (turn it on with MBEDTLS_ECDH_VARIANT_EVEREST_ENABLED). This is code that's formally proven not only for functional correctness, but also for side channel resistance; the implementation has aggressive inlining which makes it very fast, but obviously also large in terms of code size. Hopefully other algorithms will follow soon. Ciao, Torsten Once again, thanks for the detailed feedback, and I hope we can improve Mbed TLS for everyone! -- Gilles Peskine Mbed TLS developer IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base

by Gilles Peskine

>From the perspective of an application developer whose platform doesn't have a native malloc, the advantage for Mbed TLS to include its own malloc is one less dependency to integrate (so one less source of potential incompatibilities, one less component to integrate into the build, one less set of parameters to configure, one less feed of security updates to keep up with, etc.). I expect that choosing the Mbed TLS allocator would give poorer performance and higher RAM consumption than choosing the best allocator that exists out there. But it gives better time to market, and potentially a better security posture (the highest-performance allocator may or may not turn out to be actively maintained). -- Gilles Peskine Mbed TLS developer On 16/04/2020 14:19, Janos Follath via mbed-tls wrote: > Hi, > > Thank you for sharing your view, it makes perfect sense. > > You mention that you would consider keeping the module internally for the sake of baremetal applications. How would this serve the user better than choosing a third party malloc implementation? (Assuming that there are better implementation out there than ours, which I haven't confirmed, but it is not hard to imagine that such exists.) > > Regards, > Janos > > > On 15/04/2020, 21:11, "mbed-tls on behalf of Gilles Peskine via mbed-tls" <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org on behalf of mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> wrote: > > On 09/04/2020 13:17, Janos Follath via mbed-tls wrote: > > Hi, > > > > Based on what I read on this thread it seems an accepted point of view that the toolchain provided C standard library implementations are less trusted than the toolchains themselves. Can somebody please help me understand the reasoning behind this distinction? > > Well, I disagree with this statement. I trust the toolchain to implement > the C standard library correctly, and with good performance for the > target platform. I do not want to provide my own implementation of > standard functions. > > I only trust the toolchain to be functionally correct. I don't know > about its security. I certainly can't rely on the toolchain to have > security characteristics that are not guaranteed by the language > definition. For example, I do trust memset_s() to zero out sensitive > memory if the toolchain provides it, but I don't trust memset() for this > task. > > On the topic at hand, my personal opinion of memory_buffer_alloc is that > it doesn't belong in Mbed TLS. I hope that when PSA crypto is a > standalone product, it won't use malloc internally, and so it certainly > won't provide a malloc implementation. I wouldn't necessarily say the > same thing of Mbed TLS 4.0: it's difficult to design an X.509 interface > that doesn't use malloc. But if we can do it, I think we should. > > I recognize that there are many bare-metal applications that don't use > malloc themselves, but use Mbed TLS. For their sake, it does make some > sense for Mbed TLS to have its own malloc implementation. But the focus > is for internal use, not on serving as a general-purpose allocator for > applications that also use malloc for non-mbedtls-related purposes. > > -- > Gilles Peskine > Mbed TLS developer > > > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you. > -- > mbed-tls mailing list > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls > > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base

by Janos Follath

Hi, Thank you for sharing your view, it makes perfect sense. You mention that you would consider keeping the module internally for the sake of baremetal applications. How would this serve the user better than choosing a third party malloc implementation? (Assuming that there are better implementation out there than ours, which I haven't confirmed, but it is not hard to imagine that such exists.) Regards, Janos On 15/04/2020, 21:11, "mbed-tls on behalf of Gilles Peskine via mbed-tls" <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org on behalf of mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> wrote: On 09/04/2020 13:17, Janos Follath via mbed-tls wrote: > Hi, > > Based on what I read on this thread it seems an accepted point of view that the toolchain provided C standard library implementations are less trusted than the toolchains themselves. Can somebody please help me understand the reasoning behind this distinction? Well, I disagree with this statement. I trust the toolchain to implement the C standard library correctly, and with good performance for the target platform. I do not want to provide my own implementation of standard functions. I only trust the toolchain to be functionally correct. I don't know about its security. I certainly can't rely on the toolchain to have security characteristics that are not guaranteed by the language definition. For example, I do trust memset_s() to zero out sensitive memory if the toolchain provides it, but I don't trust memset() for this task. On the topic at hand, my personal opinion of memory_buffer_alloc is that it doesn't belong in Mbed TLS. I hope that when PSA crypto is a standalone product, it won't use malloc internally, and so it certainly won't provide a malloc implementation. I wouldn't necessarily say the same thing of Mbed TLS 4.0: it's difficult to design an X.509 interface that doesn't use malloc. But if we can do it, I think we should. I recognize that there are many bare-metal applications that don't use malloc themselves, but use Mbed TLS. For their sake, it does make some sense for Mbed TLS to have its own malloc implementation. But the focus is for internal use, not on serving as a general-purpose allocator for applications that also use malloc for non-mbedtls-related purposes. -- Gilles Peskine Mbed TLS developer IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you. -- mbed-tls mailing list mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove pkcs11.c from the code base

by Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard

Hi Gilles, Thanks for this precision, as well as the reminder of the existing github issue. With no opposition here in a week, and none on github for nearly 3 months either, plus no opposition when we marked it as deprecated in 2.21 in February, I'm also moving this to the "Accepted" section on the wiki discussion tracking page: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ - but again, it's still time to voice concerns until we've actually removed it from the code base. Regards, Manuel.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove havege.c from the code base

by Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard

Hi Gilles, Thanks for your feedback and for providing a link to the existing issue, which I completely forgot about - I'll reference that in the wiki as well. Since it's been a week, with one agreement and no opposition, I'm also moving this to the "Accepted" section in the summary wiki page: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ - though again, it you have concerns it's still time to voice them. Regards, Manuel.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove old TLS options from the code base entirely

by Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard

Hi all, Since this list of old options was probably not controversial in the first place and there has been no opposition in more than a week (a time that was sufficient for other thread in the same series to get several reactions), I'm moving this from "Under discussion" to "Accepted" in the summary wiki page: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ This is not meant to shut down discussion and if you disagree or have concerns it's still time to voice them - this is just to simplify tracking of the discussions. Best regards, Manuel.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base

by Gilles Peskine

On 09/04/2020 13:17, Janos Follath via mbed-tls wrote: > Hi, > > Based on what I read on this thread it seems an accepted point of view that the toolchain provided C standard library implementations are less trusted than the toolchains themselves. Can somebody please help me understand the reasoning behind this distinction? Well, I disagree with this statement. I trust the toolchain to implement the C standard library correctly, and with good performance for the target platform. I do not want to provide my own implementation of standard functions. I only trust the toolchain to be functionally correct. I don't know about its security. I certainly can't rely on the toolchain to have security characteristics that are not guaranteed by the language definition. For example, I do trust memset_s() to zero out sensitive memory if the toolchain provides it, but I don't trust memset() for this task. On the topic at hand, my personal opinion of memory_buffer_alloc is that it doesn't belong in Mbed TLS. I hope that when PSA crypto is a standalone product, it won't use malloc internally, and so it certainly won't provide a malloc implementation. I wouldn't necessarily say the same thing of Mbed TLS 4.0: it's difficult to design an X.509 interface that doesn't use malloc. But if we can do it, I think we should. I recognize that there are many bare-metal applications that don't use malloc themselves, but use Mbed TLS. For their sake, it does make some sense for Mbed TLS to have its own malloc implementation. But the focus is for internal use, not on serving as a general-purpose allocator for applications that also use malloc for non-mbedtls-related purposes. -- Gilles Peskine Mbed TLS developer IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove havege.c from the code base

by Gilles Peskine

Yes, we should remove it. Unlike other features, I think we should remove HAVEGE _especially_ if someone is using it, because unlike the rest of the library, I cannot vouch for its security. I don't even know if our havege.c is implementing the HAVEGE specification correctly. And I cannot think of a platform where HAVEGE would give a useful amount of entropy, and where there isn't already a proper hardware RNG or an OS kernel with its own entropy gathering built with knowledge of the actual platform. (Also noted on https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbedtls/issues/2599 .) -- Gilles Peskine Mbed TLS developer On 08/04/2020 12:41, Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard via mbed-tls wrote: > Hi all, > > In this new installment of "let's discuss ideas for Mbed TLS 3.0" [1]: > should we remove havege.c from the code base? > > [1]: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ > > The crypto library currently includes an implementation of the HAVEGE entropy > gatherer [2], which is disabled in the default build (MBEDTLS_HAVEGE_C in > config.h), but used as a source by our entropy module if enabled. > > [2]: https://www.irisa.fr/caps/projects/hipsor/ > > We'd like to drop this module and remove it from the code base entirely for > the following reasons: > > - HAVEGE was designed for superscalar processors with high > microarchitectural complexity, and is unsuitable for microcontrollers (or > virtualized environments). We feel like when a complex enough CPU is used for > HAVEGE to stand a chance of being secure, it's very likely that an operating > system is also available, which probably already manages a random generator > better that what we can do in user space. > > - On a more practical note, our implementation relies on `timing_hardclock()` > provided by timing.c only for a limited number of architectures and > environments (funnily enough, not including any Arm architecture), with a > silent fallback to a definition relying on `gettimeofday()` which is clearly > not high-resolution enough to make HAVEGE secure. > > - As with any random source, it is very difficult to assess whether HAVEGE is > actually secure on any given platform. Further, the maintenance team > doesn't have any specific knowledge of HAVEGE and there hasn't been any > independent evaluation of our implementation of it. > > - As a result of the above points, we're afraid people using our HAVEGE > implementation on the wrong platforms, might be getting a false sense of > security, which might prevent them from using more secure options, such as the > OS RNG (when using an OS) or a hardware RNG (on microcontrollers). > > If you're using MBEDTLS_HAVEGE_C or know someone who does, or if for any other > reason you think we shouldn't drop it in Mbed TLS 3.0, please speak up now! > > Regards, > Manuel. IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove pkcs11.c from the code base

by Gilles Peskine

Hello, As noted in https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbedtls/issues/3006, I'm aware of only one project that is using Mbed TLS's pkcs11-helper support: OpenVPN. But this support has been removed from the development version. -- Gilles Peskine Mbed TLS developer On 08/04/2020 12:37, Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard via mbed-tls wrote: > Hi all, > > In this new installment of "let's discuss ideas for Mbed TLS 3.0" [1]: > should we remove pkcs11.c from the code base? > > [1]: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ > > The X.509 library currently includes a module called "pkcs11", excluded from > the default build, which provides a few wrappers around libpkcs11-helper [2], > a library that "simplifies the interaction with PKCS#11 providers for end-user > applications". In practice, it supports the use of X.509 certificates > associated with an RSA key (not ECDSA) managed by libpkcs11-helper. > > [2]: https://github.com/OpenSC/pkcs11-helper > > We'd like to drop this module and remove it from the code base entirely for > the following reasons: > > - It has limited functionality, and soon PSA Crypto will provide more flexible > support for secure management of private keys (not just RSA, and not just > associated with X.509 certificates). > > - It currently has not automated tests so we're not even sure if it still > works properly. > > - The documentation is scarce and no member of the current maintenance team > knows for sure how it's supposed to work. > > - We never receive any support request about it so we're not sure if anyone is > still using it. (As a weaker signal in the same direction, we deprecated it > in 2.21.0, released 2020-02-20, and nobody complained so far.) > > If you're using MBEDTLS_PKCS11_C or know someone who does, or if for any other > reason you think we shouldn't drop it in Mbed TLS 3.0, please speak up now! > > Regards, > Manuel. > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

6 years, 2 months

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Running Mbed TLS unit tests on embedded targets

by Gilles Peskine

Hello, We're planning to make some changes to the way you can run Mbed TLS unit tests on embedded platforms. We want to make it easier to run the tests on platforms that have limited space for code and don't have a filesystem to read data from. At the moment, there are two ways to build the test suites. If you run 'make test', this builds one a host executable using host_test.function for each test_suite_*.function and one “compiled” data file for each test_suite_*.data, and the executable reads the compiled data file at runtime. It's also possible to build an executable with target_test.function, which includes calls to the Mbed-tools Greentea library to communicate over the serial port, and you can use the script mbedtls_test.py to run the tests with Greentea. Neither method works directly for embedded platforms other than Mbed OS. If you've run the Mbed TLS unit tests without reading the .datax file from the filesystem, and without using Mbed OS and Greentea, how did you do it? If you haven't run the unit tests but would like to do so, what changes would you like to see what Mbed TLS provides? I have a few more specific questions: • Does Mbed TLS need to include some abstraction for serial communication? If not, what would the interface of the test functions be? (Tests can currently take inputs that are zero-terminated text string, binary string with length, or int, and we'd like to add the possibility to add other integer types such as uint64_t, but nothing more complex. The outcome of a test is pass/fail/skip, and if fail/skip location information about the failure.) • Is it useful to have a way to build the test data into the executable, so that the only interaction that the executable needs is to write out the test results? It's more convenient but doesn't work everywhere (the biggest test suite has >200kB of test data). • Should test executables be self-contained in their reporting (including error messages)? Or should they minimize code size, and then you'd need an extra host-side script to make sense of results? • The current .function-to-.c transformation script (generate_test_code.py) generates a single C file with all of the test code (but not the test data). Is this a useful requirement? We welcome any thoughts you may have on the topic. -- Gilles Peskine Mbed TLS developer IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base

by Janos Follath

Hi Dan, Thank you for explaining, I see it now. I think we definitely should leave the choice open for Mbed TLS users and I agree that such a joint stdlib implementation project would be a much better place for a toolchain independent memory allocator. Regards, Janos On 09/04/2020, 14:31, "mbed-tls on behalf of Dan Handley via mbed-tls" <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org on behalf of mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> wrote: Hi Janos It's not so much that the toolchain stdlib implementations are less trusted from a security point of view, it's that there is variation in their non-functional characteristics, e.g. * security * robustness * code size * performance * open-ness * ... If you remove this variation it's easier to reason about the non-functional characteristics of the code. This is perhaps more important for projects that build final executable images but may also be important for libraries, especially ones that export executable link libraries like Mbed TLS. On the other hand, Mbed TLS is deployed in many other places than Trusted Firmware and it may be hard to choose a stdlib implementation that works for all users. Perhaps the compromise is to create a shared stdlib implementation for Trusted Firmware deployments but leave the choice open for other Mbed TLS users? Regards Dan > -----Original Message----- > From: mbed-tls <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> On Behalf Of > Janos Follath via mbed-tls > Sent: 09 April 2020 12:18 > To: mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > Subject: Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code > base > > Hi, > > Based on what I read on this thread it seems an accepted point of view that > the toolchain provided C standard library implementations are less trusted > than the toolchains themselves. Can somebody please help me understand the > reasoning behind this distinction? > > Regards, > Janos > > On 09/04/2020, 12:07, "Dan Handley via mbed-tls" <mbed- > tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> wrote: > > Hi > > There has already been some discussion about a shared C standard library > implementation, at least for TF-A and TF-M. So far there's been general > agreement that this is a good idea but no actual commitment from anyone to > make this happen, since each project is reasonably happy with what they've > got. > > Regarding MBEDTLS_MEMORY_BUFFER_ALLOC_C, TF-A at least enables this so > removing this from the codebase would be an issue there. Memory allocators > are probably not the core expertise of other Trusted Firmware projects either > but it needs to be if they're going to use them! > > I propose that we move this allocator into a new shared > TrustedFirmware.org standard C library project and work with the other > projects to ensure it has the correct initial maintainers. This will probably > have to be driven by the maintainers of whichever project is most motivated > to make this happen. It sounds like that could be Mbed TLS and this will need > to be done before any separation of the PSA Crypto implementation. In the > short term, as we move C stdlib functionality out of the other projects and > into this new project, we will need to support multiple implementations of > some functions. Eventually we should move towards a common implementation, > and I agree we should look at what security-oriented implementations are > already available. > > I also agree it would make sense for Mbed TLS to not use the toolchain- > provided stdlib implementation by default, but only once it uses a default > implementation it trusts. > > Regards > > Dan. > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: mbed-tls <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> On Behalf > Of > > Ronald Cron via mbed-tls > > Sent: 09 April 2020 08:47 > > To: mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > > Subject: Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from > the code > > base > > > > Hi, I think this is related to the more general need for an > implementation of > > the C standard library for trusted firmware projects. As far as I know > TF-A > > and TF-M don't use the standard library provided by compilation > toolchains. > > The rationale is to have complete control over the trusted firmware > code. > > Currently they both have their own partial implementation of the parts > of the > > C standard library they need. > > > > This memory_buffer_alloc.c module in question here is another partial > > implementation of the C standard library. Currently TF-A and TF-M don't > > use/provide dynamic memory allocations but PSA-FF explicitly mentions > that an > > SPM implementation may support dynamic memory allocation. Thus it is > possible > > that TF-M at some point consider providing dynamic memory allocation > support. > > > > All of this to say that a possible way forward may be to remove > > memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base when there is a C standard > library > > implementation common to trustedfirmware.org projects (is there already > a > > security oriented open source implementation out there ?). > > > > In Mbed TLS, it would also make sense to me to, by default, not use C > > standard libraries provided by compilation toolchains > > (MBEDTLS_PLATFORM_NO_STD_FUNCTIONS defined by default). > > > > Thanks, Ronald. > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: mbed-tls <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> On Behalf > Of > > Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard via mbed-tls > > Sent: 08 April 2020 12:42 > > To: mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > > Cc: nd <nd(a)arm.com> > > Subject: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the > code > > base > > > > Hi all, > > > > In this new installment of "let's discuss ideas for Mbed TLS 3.0" [1]: > > should we remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base? > > > > [1]: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ > > > > Currently the crypto library includes a module called > memory_buffer_alloc.c, > > disabled in the default build (config.h option > MBEDTLS_MEMORY_BUFFER_ALLOC_C), > > which provides implementations of calloc() and free() based on a user- > > provided buffer (which could be static or on the stack), suitable for > use in > > the rest of the crypto, X.509 and TLS libraries as replacements to the > > standard functions. > > > > In addition to providing replacement calloc() and free(), the module > also > > offers some facilities for measurement and debugging. > > > > We're considering dropping this module and removing it from the code > base > > entirely for the following reasons: > > > > - Memory allocators are not our core area of expertise. > > > > - This allocator is pretty basic and has a large allocation overhead. > For > > example for ECC computations, the overhead can be as large as the > actual > > memory used. > > > > - Using this allocator also tends to slow things down, so we don't run > many > > tests with it enabled. > > > > - In the future when we split between PSA Crypto on one side and Mbed > TLS and > > X.509 on the other, it's unclear on which side this allocator should > fall. > > Which can be taken as a sign that it doesn't really belong here. > > > > On the other hand, we're hesitating for the following reasons: > > > > - We know from bug reports and questions that some people are using it. > > > > - Unlike other modules we'd like to drop, there isn't a strong security > > incentive to dropping this allocator, it's merely a matter of how we > spend > > our maintenance resources. > > > > What do you think? Should we keep maintaining this allocator as part of > Mbed > > TLS? Should we drop it and focus on our core instead? If you're using > this > > allocator, why did you pick it over other alternatives? > > > > Regards, > > Manuel. > > -- > > mbed-tls mailing list > > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls > > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are > > confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended > > recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the > > contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy > the > > information in any medium. Thank you. > > -- > > mbed-tls mailing list > > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are > confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended > recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the > contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the > information in any medium. Thank you. > -- > mbed-tls mailing list > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls > > > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are > confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended > recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the > contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the > information in any medium. Thank you. > -- > mbed-tls mailing list > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls -- mbed-tls mailing list mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

6 years, 2 months

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Some thoughts towards mbed TLS 3.0

by Torsten Schuetze

Hi all, this will be a long mail. Sorry for that. In the past weeks I've been using mbedTLS 2.16.5 for implementing crypto on an ARM Cortex M4 (STM32F479). This was my first experience with mbedTLS, but I have some (almost 20 years) experience with applied and high-assurance crypto. So maybe the following thoughts fit into the discussion of plans for version 3.0 of Mbed TLS. In the end, I achieved everything that was required for my project with mbedTLS, but some things surprised me or it took a while to find out. I'll enumerate the following points for easier reference. Nothing of the following is meant to embarrass anyone, just my personal thoughts. 1. I really missed an Initialize, Update, Finalize (IUF) interface for CCM. For GCM, we have mbedtls_gcm_init(), mbedtls_gcm_setkey(), mbedtls_gcm_starts(), mbedtls_gcm_update() iterated, mbedtls_gcm_finish(), mbedtls_gcm_free() or the comfort functions mbedtls_gcm_crypt_and_tag() and mbedtls_gcm_auth_decrypt(). For CCM, only mbedtls_ccm_init(), mbedtls_ccm_setkey(), mbedtls_ccm_encrypt_and_tag() or mbedtls_ccm_auth_decrypt() and mbedtls_ccm_free(). With this interface it was only possible to encrypt and tag 128 kByte on my target system, while with GCM I could encrypt much larger files. see Github issue #662 and my comment there 2. The next step, of course, is to integrate this into the higher mbedtls_cipher layer. Regarding higher, abstract layers: I often didn't understand which interface I was supposed to use. In general, I like to use the lowest available interface, for example, #include "mbedtls/sha512.h" when I want to use sha512. However, if I need HMAC-SHA-512 or HKDF-HMAC-SHA-512 then I have to use the interface in md.h. For hash functions this is fine. Almost all hash functions are supported via md.h. (I missed SHA-512/256 which is sometimes preferable to SHA-256 on 64bit systems). But with cipher.h, I can only access Chacha20Poly1305 and AES-GCM, not AES-CCM. 3. For certification and evaluation purposes I need some test vectors for each crypto function on target. While I know about the comprehensive self-test program I'm now talking about built-in functions like mbedtls_sha512_self_test(), etc to be enabled with #define MBEDTLS_SELF_TEST. These self-tests are very different in coverage. For SHA-384 and SHA-512 they are fine, for HMAC-SHA-384 and HMAC-SHA-512 I couldn't find any as well as for HKDF-HMAC-SHA-256 (in RFC 5869) or HKDF-HMAC-SHA-384/512 (official test vectors difficult to find). AES-CTR and AES-XTS are only tested with key length 128 bit, not with 256 bit. AES-CCM is not tested with 256 bit and even for 128 bit, the test vector from the standard NIST SP 800-38C with long additional data is not used. The builtin self-test for GCM is the best I've seen with mbedtls: all three key lengths are tested as well as the IUF-interface and the comfort function. Bravo! 4. That I couldn't configure AES-256 only, i.e. without AES-128 and AES-192, was to be expected (and the code overhead is not that much). But in modern modes of operations nobody needs AES decryption, only the forward direction. Sometimes modern publications as Schwabe/Stoffelen "All the AES you need on Cortex-M3 and M4" provide only the forward direction. So, it would be fine if one could configure an AES (ECB) encryption only without decryption. Of course, this is only possible if we don't use CBC mode, etc. This wouldn't only save the AES decryption code but also the rather large T-tables for decryption. 5. Regarding AES or better the AES context-type definition typedef struct mbedtls_aes_context { int nr; /*!< The number of rounds. */ uint32_t *rk; /*!< AES round keys. */ uint32_t buf[68]; /*!< Unaligned data buffer. This buffer can hold 32 extra Bytes, which can be used for one of the following purposes: <ul><li>Alignment if VIA padlock is used.</li> <li>Simplifying key expansion in the 256-bit case by generating an extra round key. </li></ul> */ } mbedtls_aes_context; I really don't understand why we need additional 2176 bit in EVERY AES context. I would understand 128 bit (one block size) or even 512 bit (for example for CTR optimization which is not used!). But 2176 bit in every AES context? The VIA padlock is not very common, I suppose. But even if it were, this doesn't justify such memory overhead. How wasteful this is, one can see in the next type definition /** * \brief The AES XTS context-type definition. */ typedef struct mbedtls_aes_xts_context { mbedtls_aes_context crypt; /*!< The AES context to use for AES block encryption or decryption. */ mbedtls_aes_context tweak; /*!< The AES context used for tweak computation. */ } mbedtls_aes_xts_context; The tweak context is for the encryption of exactly 128 bit, not more. 6. In general, the contexts of mbedTLS are rather full of implementation specific details. Most extreme is mbedtls_ecp_group in ecp.h. Wouldn't it be clearer if one separates the standard things (domain parameters in this case) from implementation specific details? 7. While at Elliptic Curve Cryptography: I assume that some of you know that projectives coordinates as outer interface to ECC are dangerous, see David Naccache, Nigel P. Smart, Jacques Stern: Projective Coordinates Leak, Eurocrypt 2004, pp. 257–267. Therefore, the usual interface in ECC standards are either affine points or compressed affine points (Okay, with the modern curves Curve25519 and Curve 448 it's X only.). Now with /** * \brief The ECP point structure, in Jacobian coordinates. * * \note All functions expect and return points satisfying * the following condition: <code>Z == 0</code> or * <code>Z == 1</code>. Other values of \p Z are * used only by internal functions. * The point is zero, or "at infinity", if <code>Z == 0</code>. * Otherwise, \p X and \p Y are its standard (affine) * coordinates. */ typedef struct mbedtls_ecp_point { mbedtls_mpi X; /*!< The X coordinate of the ECP point. */ mbedtls_mpi Y; /*!< The Y coordinate of the ECP point. */ mbedtls_mpi Z; /*!< The Z coordinate of the ECP point. */ } mbedtls_ecp_point; you have Jacobian coordinates, i.e. projective coordinates, as outer interface. In the comment, its is noted that only the affine part is used, but can this be assured? In all circumstances? 8. In my personal opinion the definition /** * \brief The ECP key-pair structure. * * A generic key-pair that may be used for ECDSA and fixed ECDH, for example. * * \note Members are deliberately in the same order as in the * ::mbedtls_ecdsa_context structure. */ typedef struct mbedtls_ecp_keypair { mbedtls_ecp_group grp; /*!< Elliptic curve and base point */ mbedtls_mpi d; /*!< our secret value */ mbedtls_ecp_point Q; /*!< our public value */ } mbedtls_ecp_keypair; is dangerous. Why not differentiate between private and public key and domain parameters? How often does it happen by accident with this structure that you give the private key (unneeded and dangerous) together with the public key to ECDSA signature verification? Obviously this was known (and perhaps it happened) to the authors of programs\ecdsa.c with the following comment /* * Transfer public information to verifying context * * We could use the same context for verification and signatures, but we * chose to use a new one in order to make it clear that the verifying * context only needs the public key (Q), and not the private key (d). */ What is sometimes useful, is to have the public key at hand when you have performed a private key operation (as countermeasure against fault attacks, verify after signing). But for ECC the verification procedure if often too expensive (in contrast to cheap RSA verify). 9. Regarding ECC examples: I found it very difficult that there isn't a single example with known test vectors as in the relevant crypto standards, i.e. FIPS 186-4 and ANSI X9.62-2005, with raw public keys. What I mean are (defined) curves, public key value Q=(Qx,Qy) and known signature values r and s. In the example ecdsa.c you generate your own key pair and read/write the signature in serialized form. In the example programs/pkey/pk_sign.c and pk_verify.c you use a higher interface pk.h and keys in PEM format. So, it took me a while for a program to verify (all) known answer tests in the standards (old standards as ANSI X9.62 1998 have more detailed known answer tests). One needs this interface with raw public keys for example for CAVP tests, see The FIPS 186-4 Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm Validation System (ECDSA2VS). 10. While debugging mbedtls_ecdsa_verify() in my example program, I found out, that the ECDSA, ECC and MPI operations are very, let's say, nested. So, IMHO there is a lot of function call overhead and special cases. It would be interesting to see what's the performance impact of a clean, straight-forward mbedtls_ecdsa_verify without restartable code, etc. to the current one. 11. In the moment, there is no single known answer tests for ECDSA (which could be activated with #define MBEDTLS_SELF_TEST). I wouldn't say that you need an example for every curve and hash combination, as it is done in ECDSA2VS CAVP, but one example for one of the NIST curves and one for Curve25519 and - if I have a wish free - one for Brainpool would be fine. And this would solve #9 above. 12. Just a minor issue: I only needed ECDSA signature verification, therefore I only included MBEDTLS_ASN1_PARSE_C. But it is not possible to compile without MBEDTLS_ASN1_WRITE_C needed for ECDSA signature generation. 13. Feature request: Since it was irrelevant for my task (only verification, no generation) I didn't have a detailed look a your ECC side-channel countermeasures. But obviously you use the same protected code for scalar multiplication in verify and sign, right? Wouldn't it be possible to use Shamir's trick in verification with fast unprotected multi-scalar multiplication. In the moment, mbedtls_ecdsa_verify is a factor 4-5 slower than mbedtls_ecdsa_sign, while OpenSSLs verify is faster than sign. 14. Design question: In the moment, both GCM and CCM use their own implementation of CTR encryption which is very simple. But then we have mbedtls_aes_crypt_ctr() in aes.h which is very simple, too. Let's assume at one day we have a performance optimized CTR encryption (for example from Schwabe & Stoffelen) with all fancy stuff like counter-mode caching etc. Then this would have to be replaced at three places at minimum. While isn't the code at this point more modularized? Is this a dedicated design decision? Why do I find at so many places for( i = 0; i < 16; i++ ) y[i] ^= b[i]; instead of a fast 128-bit XOR macro with 32bit aligned data? So, that's it for the moment. I hope I could give some hints for the further development of mbedTLS. Feel free to discuss any of the above points. It's clear to me that we cannot have both: clear and simple to understand code and performance records. Ciao, Torsten

6 years, 2 months

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Security Advisory and Release of Mbed TLS 2.16.6 and 2.7.15

by Janos Follath

Hi, An Mbed TLS Security Advisory has been issued to accompany the release of Mbed TLS versions 2.16.6 and 2.7.15, which have just been released. These releases of Mbed TLS address several security issues, provide bug fixes, and bring other minor changes. Full details are available in the release notes<https://tls.mbed.org/techupdates/releases/mbedtls-2.16.6-and-2.7.15-released> and in the 2020-04 security advisory<https://tls.mbed.org/tech-updates/security-advisories/mbedtls-security-advi…>. We recommend all users to consider whether they are impacted, and to upgrade appropriately. -- Janos Follath Mbed TLS Developer IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

6 years, 2 months

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mbedtls_base64_encode reports different olen's when used for size checking and when encoding

by Frederik Wedel-Heinen

Hi, I don't understand why mbedtls_base64_encode returns different olen's for the same source buffer. See example below: uint8_t s[10]; uint8_t d[17]; size_t sz; int ret; ret = mbedtls_base64_encode(NULL, 0, &sz, s, 10); // returns sz == 17 ret = mbedtls_base64_encode(d, 17, &sz, s, 10); // returns sz == 16 Shouldn't it be the same? Regards, Frederik

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base

by Dan Handley

Hi Janos It's not so much that the toolchain stdlib implementations are less trusted from a security point of view, it's that there is variation in their non-functional characteristics, e.g. * security * robustness * code size * performance * open-ness * ... If you remove this variation it's easier to reason about the non-functional characteristics of the code. This is perhaps more important for projects that build final executable images but may also be important for libraries, especially ones that export executable link libraries like Mbed TLS. On the other hand, Mbed TLS is deployed in many other places than Trusted Firmware and it may be hard to choose a stdlib implementation that works for all users. Perhaps the compromise is to create a shared stdlib implementation for Trusted Firmware deployments but leave the choice open for other Mbed TLS users? Regards Dan > -----Original Message----- > From: mbed-tls <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> On Behalf Of > Janos Follath via mbed-tls > Sent: 09 April 2020 12:18 > To: mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > Subject: Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code > base > > Hi, > > Based on what I read on this thread it seems an accepted point of view that > the toolchain provided C standard library implementations are less trusted > than the toolchains themselves. Can somebody please help me understand the > reasoning behind this distinction? > > Regards, > Janos > > On 09/04/2020, 12:07, "Dan Handley via mbed-tls" <mbed- > tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> wrote: > > Hi > > There has already been some discussion about a shared C standard library > implementation, at least for TF-A and TF-M. So far there's been general > agreement that this is a good idea but no actual commitment from anyone to > make this happen, since each project is reasonably happy with what they've > got. > > Regarding MBEDTLS_MEMORY_BUFFER_ALLOC_C, TF-A at least enables this so > removing this from the codebase would be an issue there. Memory allocators > are probably not the core expertise of other Trusted Firmware projects either > but it needs to be if they're going to use them! > > I propose that we move this allocator into a new shared > TrustedFirmware.org standard C library project and work with the other > projects to ensure it has the correct initial maintainers. This will probably > have to be driven by the maintainers of whichever project is most motivated > to make this happen. It sounds like that could be Mbed TLS and this will need > to be done before any separation of the PSA Crypto implementation. In the > short term, as we move C stdlib functionality out of the other projects and > into this new project, we will need to support multiple implementations of > some functions. Eventually we should move towards a common implementation, > and I agree we should look at what security-oriented implementations are > already available. > > I also agree it would make sense for Mbed TLS to not use the toolchain- > provided stdlib implementation by default, but only once it uses a default > implementation it trusts. > > Regards > > Dan. > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: mbed-tls <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> On Behalf > Of > > Ronald Cron via mbed-tls > > Sent: 09 April 2020 08:47 > > To: mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > > Subject: Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from > the code > > base > > > > Hi, I think this is related to the more general need for an > implementation of > > the C standard library for trusted firmware projects. As far as I know > TF-A > > and TF-M don't use the standard library provided by compilation > toolchains. > > The rationale is to have complete control over the trusted firmware > code. > > Currently they both have their own partial implementation of the parts > of the > > C standard library they need. > > > > This memory_buffer_alloc.c module in question here is another partial > > implementation of the C standard library. Currently TF-A and TF-M don't > > use/provide dynamic memory allocations but PSA-FF explicitly mentions > that an > > SPM implementation may support dynamic memory allocation. Thus it is > possible > > that TF-M at some point consider providing dynamic memory allocation > support. > > > > All of this to say that a possible way forward may be to remove > > memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base when there is a C standard > library > > implementation common to trustedfirmware.org projects (is there already > a > > security oriented open source implementation out there ?). > > > > In Mbed TLS, it would also make sense to me to, by default, not use C > > standard libraries provided by compilation toolchains > > (MBEDTLS_PLATFORM_NO_STD_FUNCTIONS defined by default). > > > > Thanks, Ronald. > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: mbed-tls <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> On Behalf > Of > > Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard via mbed-tls > > Sent: 08 April 2020 12:42 > > To: mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > > Cc: nd <nd(a)arm.com> > > Subject: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the > code > > base > > > > Hi all, > > > > In this new installment of "let's discuss ideas for Mbed TLS 3.0" [1]: > > should we remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base? > > > > [1]: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ > > > > Currently the crypto library includes a module called > memory_buffer_alloc.c, > > disabled in the default build (config.h option > MBEDTLS_MEMORY_BUFFER_ALLOC_C), > > which provides implementations of calloc() and free() based on a user- > > provided buffer (which could be static or on the stack), suitable for > use in > > the rest of the crypto, X.509 and TLS libraries as replacements to the > > standard functions. > > > > In addition to providing replacement calloc() and free(), the module > also > > offers some facilities for measurement and debugging. > > > > We're considering dropping this module and removing it from the code > base > > entirely for the following reasons: > > > > - Memory allocators are not our core area of expertise. > > > > - This allocator is pretty basic and has a large allocation overhead. > For > > example for ECC computations, the overhead can be as large as the > actual > > memory used. > > > > - Using this allocator also tends to slow things down, so we don't run > many > > tests with it enabled. > > > > - In the future when we split between PSA Crypto on one side and Mbed > TLS and > > X.509 on the other, it's unclear on which side this allocator should > fall. > > Which can be taken as a sign that it doesn't really belong here. > > > > On the other hand, we're hesitating for the following reasons: > > > > - We know from bug reports and questions that some people are using it. > > > > - Unlike other modules we'd like to drop, there isn't a strong security > > incentive to dropping this allocator, it's merely a matter of how we > spend > > our maintenance resources. > > > > What do you think? Should we keep maintaining this allocator as part of > Mbed > > TLS? Should we drop it and focus on our core instead? If you're using > this > > allocator, why did you pick it over other alternatives? > > > > Regards, > > Manuel. > > -- > > mbed-tls mailing list > > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls > > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are > > confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended > > recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the > > contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy > the > > information in any medium. Thank you. > > -- > > mbed-tls mailing list > > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are > confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended > recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the > contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the > information in any medium. Thank you. > -- > mbed-tls mailing list > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls > > > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are > confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended > recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the > contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the > information in any medium. Thank you. > -- > mbed-tls mailing list > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base

by Janos Follath

Hi, Based on what I read on this thread it seems an accepted point of view that the toolchain provided C standard library implementations are less trusted than the toolchains themselves. Can somebody please help me understand the reasoning behind this distinction? Regards, Janos On 09/04/2020, 12:07, "Dan Handley via mbed-tls" <mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> wrote: Hi There has already been some discussion about a shared C standard library implementation, at least for TF-A and TF-M. So far there's been general agreement that this is a good idea but no actual commitment from anyone to make this happen, since each project is reasonably happy with what they've got. Regarding MBEDTLS_MEMORY_BUFFER_ALLOC_C, TF-A at least enables this so removing this from the codebase would be an issue there. Memory allocators are probably not the core expertise of other Trusted Firmware projects either but it needs to be if they're going to use them! I propose that we move this allocator into a new shared TrustedFirmware.org standard C library project and work with the other projects to ensure it has the correct initial maintainers. This will probably have to be driven by the maintainers of whichever project is most motivated to make this happen. It sounds like that could be Mbed TLS and this will need to be done before any separation of the PSA Crypto implementation. In the short term, as we move C stdlib functionality out of the other projects and into this new project, we will need to support multiple implementations of some functions. Eventually we should move towards a common implementation, and I agree we should look at what security-oriented implementations are already available. I also agree it would make sense for Mbed TLS to not use the toolchain-provided stdlib implementation by default, but only once it uses a default implementation it trusts. Regards Dan. > -----Original Message----- > From: mbed-tls <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> On Behalf Of > Ronald Cron via mbed-tls > Sent: 09 April 2020 08:47 > To: mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > Subject: Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code > base > > Hi, I think this is related to the more general need for an implementation of > the C standard library for trusted firmware projects. As far as I know TF-A > and TF-M don't use the standard library provided by compilation toolchains. > The rationale is to have complete control over the trusted firmware code. > Currently they both have their own partial implementation of the parts of the > C standard library they need. > > This memory_buffer_alloc.c module in question here is another partial > implementation of the C standard library. Currently TF-A and TF-M don't > use/provide dynamic memory allocations but PSA-FF explicitly mentions that an > SPM implementation may support dynamic memory allocation. Thus it is possible > that TF-M at some point consider providing dynamic memory allocation support. > > All of this to say that a possible way forward may be to remove > memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base when there is a C standard library > implementation common to trustedfirmware.org projects (is there already a > security oriented open source implementation out there ?). > > In Mbed TLS, it would also make sense to me to, by default, not use C > standard libraries provided by compilation toolchains > (MBEDTLS_PLATFORM_NO_STD_FUNCTIONS defined by default). > > Thanks, Ronald. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: mbed-tls <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> On Behalf Of > Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard via mbed-tls > Sent: 08 April 2020 12:42 > To: mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > Cc: nd <nd(a)arm.com> > Subject: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code > base > > Hi all, > > In this new installment of "let's discuss ideas for Mbed TLS 3.0" [1]: > should we remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base? > > [1]: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ > > Currently the crypto library includes a module called memory_buffer_alloc.c, > disabled in the default build (config.h option MBEDTLS_MEMORY_BUFFER_ALLOC_C), > which provides implementations of calloc() and free() based on a user- > provided buffer (which could be static or on the stack), suitable for use in > the rest of the crypto, X.509 and TLS libraries as replacements to the > standard functions. > > In addition to providing replacement calloc() and free(), the module also > offers some facilities for measurement and debugging. > > We're considering dropping this module and removing it from the code base > entirely for the following reasons: > > - Memory allocators are not our core area of expertise. > > - This allocator is pretty basic and has a large allocation overhead. For > example for ECC computations, the overhead can be as large as the actual > memory used. > > - Using this allocator also tends to slow things down, so we don't run many > tests with it enabled. > > - In the future when we split between PSA Crypto on one side and Mbed TLS and > X.509 on the other, it's unclear on which side this allocator should fall. > Which can be taken as a sign that it doesn't really belong here. > > On the other hand, we're hesitating for the following reasons: > > - We know from bug reports and questions that some people are using it. > > - Unlike other modules we'd like to drop, there isn't a strong security > incentive to dropping this allocator, it's merely a matter of how we spend > our maintenance resources. > > What do you think? Should we keep maintaining this allocator as part of Mbed > TLS? Should we drop it and focus on our core instead? If you're using this > allocator, why did you pick it over other alternatives? > > Regards, > Manuel. > -- > mbed-tls mailing list > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are > confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended > recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the > contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the > information in any medium. Thank you. > -- > mbed-tls mailing list > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you. -- mbed-tls mailing list mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

6 years, 2 months

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Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base

by Dan Handley

Hi There has already been some discussion about a shared C standard library implementation, at least for TF-A and TF-M. So far there's been general agreement that this is a good idea but no actual commitment from anyone to make this happen, since each project is reasonably happy with what they've got. Regarding MBEDTLS_MEMORY_BUFFER_ALLOC_C, TF-A at least enables this so removing this from the codebase would be an issue there. Memory allocators are probably not the core expertise of other Trusted Firmware projects either but it needs to be if they're going to use them! I propose that we move this allocator into a new shared TrustedFirmware.org standard C library project and work with the other projects to ensure it has the correct initial maintainers. This will probably have to be driven by the maintainers of whichever project is most motivated to make this happen. It sounds like that could be Mbed TLS and this will need to be done before any separation of the PSA Crypto implementation. In the short term, as we move C stdlib functionality out of the other projects and into this new project, we will need to support multiple implementations of some functions. Eventually we should move towards a common implementation, and I agree we should look at what security-oriented implementations are already available. I also agree it would make sense for Mbed TLS to not use the toolchain-provided stdlib implementation by default, but only once it uses a default implementation it trusts. Regards Dan. > -----Original Message----- > From: mbed-tls <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> On Behalf Of > Ronald Cron via mbed-tls > Sent: 09 April 2020 08:47 > To: mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > Subject: Re: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code > base > > Hi, I think this is related to the more general need for an implementation of > the C standard library for trusted firmware projects. As far as I know TF-A > and TF-M don't use the standard library provided by compilation toolchains. > The rationale is to have complete control over the trusted firmware code. > Currently they both have their own partial implementation of the parts of the > C standard library they need. > > This memory_buffer_alloc.c module in question here is another partial > implementation of the C standard library. Currently TF-A and TF-M don't > use/provide dynamic memory allocations but PSA-FF explicitly mentions that an > SPM implementation may support dynamic memory allocation. Thus it is possible > that TF-M at some point consider providing dynamic memory allocation support. > > All of this to say that a possible way forward may be to remove > memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base when there is a C standard library > implementation common to trustedfirmware.org projects (is there already a > security oriented open source implementation out there ?). > > In Mbed TLS, it would also make sense to me to, by default, not use C > standard libraries provided by compilation toolchains > (MBEDTLS_PLATFORM_NO_STD_FUNCTIONS defined by default). > > Thanks, Ronald. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: mbed-tls <mbed-tls-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org> On Behalf Of > Manuel Pegourie-Gonnard via mbed-tls > Sent: 08 April 2020 12:42 > To: mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > Cc: nd <nd(a)arm.com> > Subject: [mbed-tls] 3.0 plans: remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code > base > > Hi all, > > In this new installment of "let's discuss ideas for Mbed TLS 3.0" [1]: > should we remove memory_buffer_alloc.c from the code base? > > [1]: https://developer.trustedfirmware.org/w/mbed-tls/tech-plans-3.0/ > > Currently the crypto library includes a module called memory_buffer_alloc.c, > disabled in the default build (config.h option MBEDTLS_MEMORY_BUFFER_ALLOC_C), > which provides implementations of calloc() and free() based on a user- > provided buffer (which could be static or on the stack), suitable for use in > the rest of the crypto, X.509 and TLS libraries as replacements to the > standard functions. > > In addition to providing replacement calloc() and free(), the module also > offers some facilities for measurement and debugging. > > We're considering dropping this module and removing it from the code base > entirely for the following reasons: > > - Memory allocators are not our core area of expertise. > > - This allocator is pretty basic and has a large allocation overhead. For > example for ECC computations, the overhead can be as large as the actual > memory used. > > - Using this allocator also tends to slow things down, so we don't run many > tests with it enabled. > > - In the future when we split between PSA Crypto on one side and Mbed TLS and > X.509 on the other, it's unclear on which side this allocator should fall. > Which can be taken as a sign that it doesn't really belong here. > > On the other hand, we're hesitating for the following reasons: > > - We know from bug reports and questions that some people are using it. > > - Unlike other modules we'd like to drop, there isn't a strong security > incentive to dropping this allocator, it's merely a matter of how we spend > our maintenance resources. > > What do you think? Should we keep maintaining this allocator as part of Mbed > TLS? Should we drop it and focus on our core instead? If you're using this > allocator, why did you pick it over other alternatives? > > Regards, > Manuel. > -- > mbed-tls mailing list > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls > IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are > confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended > recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the > contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the > information in any medium. Thank you. > -- > mbed-tls mailing list > mbed-tls(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org > https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/mailman/listinfo/mbed-tls IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.

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mbed-tls