0be72218f1
Rather than passing seeds up to userspace via EFI variables, pass seeds
directly to the kernel's EFI stub loader, via LINUX_EFI_RANDOM_SEED_TABLE_GUID.
EFI variables can potentially leak and suffer from forward secrecy
issues, and processing these with userspace means that they are
initialized much too late in boot to be useful. In contrast,
LINUX_EFI_RANDOM_SEED_TABLE_GUID uses EFI configuration tables, and so
is hidden from userspace entirely, and is parsed extremely early on by
the kernel, so that every single call to get_random_bytes() by the
kernel is seeded.
In order to do this properly, we use a bit more robust hashing scheme,
and make sure that each input is properly memzeroed out after use. The
scheme is:
key = HASH(LABEL || sizeof(input1) || input1 || ... || sizeof(inputN) || inputN)
new_disk_seed = HASH(key || 0)
seed_for_linux = HASH(key || 1)
The various inputs are:
- LINUX_EFI_RANDOM_SEED_TABLE_GUID from prior bootloaders
- 256 bits of seed from EFI's RNG
- The (immutable) system token, from its EFI variable
- The prior on-disk seed
- The UEFI monotonic counter
- A timestamp
This also adjusts the secure boot semantics, so that the operation is
only aborted if it's not possible to get random bytes from EFI's RNG or
a prior boot stage. With the proper hashing scheme, this should make
boot seeds safe even on secure boot.
There is currently a bug in Linux's EFI stub in which if the EFI stub
manages to generate random bytes on its own using EFI's RNG, it will
ignore what the bootloader passes. That's annoying, but it means that
either way, via systemd-boot or via EFI stub's mechanism, the RNG *does*
get initialized in a good safe way. And this bug is now fixed in the
efi.git tree, and will hopefully be backported to older kernels.
As the kernel recommends, the resultant seeds are 256 bits and are
allocated using pool memory of type EfiACPIReclaimMemory, so that it
gets freed at the right moment in boot.
System and Service Manager
Details
Most documentation is available on systemd's web site.
Assorted, older, general information about systemd can be found in the systemd Wiki.
Information about build requirements is provided in the README file.
Consult our NEWS file for information about what's new in the most recent systemd versions.
Please see the Code Map for information about this repository's layout and content.
Please see the Hacking guide for information on how to hack on systemd and test your modifications.
Please see our Contribution Guidelines for more information about filing GitHub Issues and posting GitHub Pull Requests.
When preparing patches for systemd, please follow our Coding Style Guidelines.
If you are looking for support, please contact our mailing list or join our IRC channel.
Stable branches with backported patches are available in the stable repo.