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1=========
2dm-verity
3=========
4
5Device-Mapper's "verity" target provides transparent integrity checking of
6block devices using a cryptographic digest provided by the kernel crypto API.
7This target is read-only.
8
9Construction Parameters
10=======================
11
12::
13
14    <version> <dev> <hash_dev>
15    <data_block_size> <hash_block_size>
16    <num_data_blocks> <hash_start_block>
17    <algorithm> <digest> <salt>
18    [<#opt_params> <opt_params>]
19
20<version>
21    This is the type of the on-disk hash format.
22
23    0 is the original format used in the Chromium OS.
24      The salt is appended when hashing, digests are stored continuously and
25      the rest of the block is padded with zeroes.
26
27    1 is the current format that should be used for new devices.
28      The salt is prepended when hashing and each digest is
29      padded with zeroes to the power of two.
30
31<dev>
32    This is the device containing data, the integrity of which needs to be
33    checked.  It may be specified as a path, like /dev/sdaX, or a device number,
34    <major>:<minor>.
35
36<hash_dev>
37    This is the device that supplies the hash tree data.  It may be
38    specified similarly to the device path and may be the same device.  If the
39    same device is used, the hash_start should be outside the configured
40    dm-verity device.
41
42<data_block_size>
43    The block size on a data device in bytes.
44    Each block corresponds to one digest on the hash device.
45
46<hash_block_size>
47    The size of a hash block in bytes.
48
49<num_data_blocks>
50    The number of data blocks on the data device.  Additional blocks are
51    inaccessible.  You can place hashes to the same partition as data, in this
52    case hashes are placed after <num_data_blocks>.
53
54<hash_start_block>
55    This is the offset, in <hash_block_size>-blocks, from the start of hash_dev
56    to the root block of the hash tree.
57
58<algorithm>
59    The cryptographic hash algorithm used for this device.  This should
60    be the name of the algorithm, like "sha1".
61
62<digest>
63    The hexadecimal encoding of the cryptographic hash of the root hash block
64    and the salt.  This hash should be trusted as there is no other authenticity
65    beyond this point.
66
67<salt>
68    The hexadecimal encoding of the salt value.
69
70<#opt_params>
71    Number of optional parameters. If there are no optional parameters,
72    the optional parameters section can be skipped or #opt_params can be zero.
73    Otherwise #opt_params is the number of following arguments.
74
75    Example of optional parameters section:
76        1 ignore_corruption
77
78ignore_corruption
79    Log corrupted blocks, but allow read operations to proceed normally.
80
81restart_on_corruption
82    Restart the system when a corrupted block is discovered. This option is
83    not compatible with ignore_corruption and requires user space support to
84    avoid restart loops.
85
86panic_on_corruption
87    Panic the device when a corrupted block is discovered. This option is
88    not compatible with ignore_corruption and restart_on_corruption.
89
90ignore_zero_blocks
91    Do not verify blocks that are expected to contain zeroes and always return
92    zeroes instead. This may be useful if the partition contains unused blocks
93    that are not guaranteed to contain zeroes.
94
95use_fec_from_device <fec_dev>
96    Use forward error correction (FEC) to recover from corruption if hash
97    verification fails. Use encoding data from the specified device. This
98    may be the same device where data and hash blocks reside, in which case
99    fec_start must be outside data and hash areas.
100
101    If the encoding data covers additional metadata, it must be accessible
102    on the hash device after the hash blocks.
103
104    Note: block sizes for data and hash devices must match. Also, if the
105    verity <dev> is encrypted the <fec_dev> should be too.
106
107fec_roots <num>
108    Number of generator roots. This equals to the number of parity bytes in
109    the encoding data. For example, in RS(M, N) encoding, the number of roots
110    is M-N.
111
112fec_blocks <num>
113    The number of encoding data blocks on the FEC device. The block size for
114    the FEC device is <data_block_size>.
115
116fec_start <offset>
117    This is the offset, in <data_block_size> blocks, from the start of the
118    FEC device to the beginning of the encoding data.
119
120check_at_most_once
121    Verify data blocks only the first time they are read from the data device,
122    rather than every time.  This reduces the overhead of dm-verity so that it
123    can be used on systems that are memory and/or CPU constrained.  However, it
124    provides a reduced level of security because only offline tampering of the
125    data device's content will be detected, not online tampering.
126
127    Hash blocks are still verified each time they are read from the hash device,
128    since verification of hash blocks is less performance critical than data
129    blocks, and a hash block will not be verified any more after all the data
130    blocks it covers have been verified anyway.
131
132root_hash_sig_key_desc <key_description>
133    This is the description of the USER_KEY that the kernel will lookup to get
134    the pkcs7 signature of the roothash. The pkcs7 signature is used to validate
135    the root hash during the creation of the device mapper block device.
136    Verification of roothash depends on the config DM_VERITY_VERIFY_ROOTHASH_SIG
137    being set in the kernel.  The signatures are checked against the builtin
138    trusted keyring by default, or the secondary trusted keyring if
139    DM_VERITY_VERIFY_ROOTHASH_SIG_SECONDARY_KEYRING is set.  The secondary
140    trusted keyring includes by default the builtin trusted keyring, and it can
141    also gain new certificates at run time if they are signed by a certificate
142    already in the secondary trusted keyring.
143
144try_verify_in_tasklet
145    If verity hashes are in cache and the IO size does not exceed the limit,
146    verify data blocks in bottom half instead of workqueue. This option can
147    reduce IO latency. The size limits can be configured via
148    /sys/module/dm_verity/parameters/use_bh_bytes. The four parameters
149    correspond to limits for IOPRIO_CLASS_NONE, IOPRIO_CLASS_RT,
150    IOPRIO_CLASS_BE and IOPRIO_CLASS_IDLE in turn.
151    For example:
152    <none>,<rt>,<be>,<idle>
153    4096,4096,4096,4096
154
155Theory of operation
156===================
157
158dm-verity is meant to be set up as part of a verified boot path.  This
159may be anything ranging from a boot using tboot or trustedgrub to just
160booting from a known-good device (like a USB drive or CD).
161
162When a dm-verity device is configured, it is expected that the caller
163has been authenticated in some way (cryptographic signatures, etc).
164After instantiation, all hashes will be verified on-demand during
165disk access.  If they cannot be verified up to the root node of the
166tree, the root hash, then the I/O will fail.  This should detect
167tampering with any data on the device and the hash data.
168
169Cryptographic hashes are used to assert the integrity of the device on a
170per-block basis. This allows for a lightweight hash computation on first read
171into the page cache. Block hashes are stored linearly, aligned to the nearest
172block size.
173
174If forward error correction (FEC) support is enabled any recovery of
175corrupted data will be verified using the cryptographic hash of the
176corresponding data. This is why combining error correction with
177integrity checking is essential.
178
179Hash Tree
180---------
181
182Each node in the tree is a cryptographic hash.  If it is a leaf node, the hash
183of some data block on disk is calculated. If it is an intermediary node,
184the hash of a number of child nodes is calculated.
185
186Each entry in the tree is a collection of neighboring nodes that fit in one
187block.  The number is determined based on block_size and the size of the
188selected cryptographic digest algorithm.  The hashes are linearly-ordered in
189this entry and any unaligned trailing space is ignored but included when
190calculating the parent node.
191
192The tree looks something like:
193
194	alg = sha256, num_blocks = 32768, block_size = 4096
195
196::
197
198                                 [   root    ]
199                                /    . . .    \
200                     [entry_0]                 [entry_1]
201                    /  . . .  \                 . . .   \
202         [entry_0_0]   . . .  [entry_0_127]    . . . .  [entry_1_127]
203           / ... \             /   . . .  \             /           \
204     blk_0 ... blk_127  blk_16256   blk_16383      blk_32640 . . . blk_32767
205
206
207On-disk format
208==============
209
210The verity kernel code does not read the verity metadata on-disk header.
211It only reads the hash blocks which directly follow the header.
212It is expected that a user-space tool will verify the integrity of the
213verity header.
214
215Alternatively, the header can be omitted and the dmsetup parameters can
216be passed via the kernel command-line in a rooted chain of trust where
217the command-line is verified.
218
219Directly following the header (and with sector number padded to the next hash
220block boundary) are the hash blocks which are stored a depth at a time
221(starting from the root), sorted in order of increasing index.
222
223The full specification of kernel parameters and on-disk metadata format
224is available at the cryptsetup project's wiki page
225
226  https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/wikis/DMVerity
227
228Status
229======
230V (for Valid) is returned if every check performed so far was valid.
231If any check failed, C (for Corruption) is returned.
232
233Example
234=======
235Set up a device::
236
237  # dmsetup create vroot --readonly --table \
238    "0 2097152 verity 1 /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 4096 4096 262144 1 sha256 "\
239    "4392712ba01368efdf14b05c76f9e4df0d53664630b5d48632ed17a137f39076 "\
240    "1234000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000"
241
242A command line tool veritysetup is available to compute or verify
243the hash tree or activate the kernel device. This is available from
244the cryptsetup upstream repository https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/
245(as a libcryptsetup extension).
246
247Create hash on the device::
248
249  # veritysetup format /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2
250  ...
251  Root hash: 4392712ba01368efdf14b05c76f9e4df0d53664630b5d48632ed17a137f39076
252
253Activate the device::
254
255  # veritysetup create vroot /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 \
256    4392712ba01368efdf14b05c76f9e4df0d53664630b5d48632ed17a137f39076
257