cvs commit: src/etc/defaults devfs.rules

[Jeroen C.van Gelderen]

On Friday, Sep 26, 2003, at 13:03 US/Eastern, Nate Lawson wrote:

> On Fri, 26 Sep 2003, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>>   Modified files:
>>     etc/defaults         devfs.rules
>>   Log:
>>   As far as we know, there is no reason to not expose /dev/crypto in
>>   jails so code in there can take advantage of hardware assisted
>>   crypto.
>>
>>   Revision  Changes    Path
>>   1.2       +1 -0      src/etc/defaults/devfs.rules
>
> Except for the fact that you don't want to combine access to the TSC 
> and
> this paper:
>
> http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/kocher96timing.html

You don't need a TSC source to execute a timing attack because you 
don't need absolute timing deltas. Any user program can approximate the 
required time deltas by using counters of various sorts; Even loops 
will do, albeit less efficiently. Therefore timing attacks can only be 
prevented by the crypto device driver / hardware combination. Iff 
/dev/crypto allows for timing attacks, /dev/crypto must be fixed. 
Quality hardware prevents timing attacks but if the hardware itself 
doesn't prevent them you can straightforwardly implement blinding in 
the driver.

None of this is limited to jails, the threat exists outside jails too. 
You don't want any program, jailed or not, to be able to extract keys 
from the hardware.

Cheers,
-J