4 ms·

> What's not to like? you need to patch your kernel to use it. this isn't something that openssl alone can push.

• loeg 15y ago
  So TRESOR needs to submit an acceptable patch to the nice kernel.org folks, and then it can ship as a distro default.
  • lukeschlather 15y ago
    It sounds fairly cpu-specific. I'm not sure it would lend itself very well to being packaged up for general distribution.
    • JoshTriplett 15y ago
      Linux takes CPU-specific patches all the time, and has numerous modules to take advantage of CPU features. As long as the patch gives it a clean interface and meets the Linux kernel's standards, I don't see any major roadblock. I don't, however, think that the magic early-boot changes to prompt for a passphrase almost immediately after boot would have much chance. And I don't really see the point of that compared to the usual mechanism of prompting for a passphrase from the initramfs before mounting encrypted partitions. Either way means that you have key material very briefly in memory before ending up in CPU registers, and thus that you must very carefully wipe that key material from memory before proceeding. Looking at their patch, it would need a major overhaul to become suitable for acceptance into the Linux kernel. They've also re-implemented sha256 themselves rather than using the kernel's existing implementation, and they've used that sha256 implementation for a very simplistic key derivation function (2000 iterations of sha256 directly on the passphrase itself).