Re: [PATCH v5 1/4] siphash: add cryptographically secure PRF

From: Andy Lutomirski
Date: Fri Dec 16 2016 - 17:16:31 EST


On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 2:13 PM, George Spelvin
<linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> What should we do with get_random_int() and get_random_long()? In
>> some cases it's being used in performance sensitive areas, and where
>> anti-DoS protection might be enough. In others, maybe not so much.
>
> This is tricky. The entire get_random_int() structure is an abuse of
> the hash function and will need to be thoroughly rethought to convert
> it to SipHash. Remember, SipHash's security goals are very different
> from MD5, so there's no obvious way to do the conversion.
>
> (It's *documented* as "not cryptographically secure", but we know
> where that goes.)
>
>> If we rekeyed the secret used by get_random_int() and
>> get_random_long() frequently (say, every minute or every 5 minutes),
>> would that be sufficient for current and future users of these
>> interfaces?
>
> Remembering that on "real" machines it's full SipHash, then I'd say that
> 64-bit security + rekeying seems reasonable.
>
> The question is, the idea has recently been floated to make hsiphash =
> SipHash-1-3 on 64-bit machines. Is *that* okay?
>
>
> The annoying thing about the currently proposed patch is that the *only*
> chaining is the returned value. What I'd *like* to do is the same
> pattern as we do with md5, and remember v[0..3] between invocations.
> But there's no partial SipHash primitive; we only get one word back.
>
> Even
> *chaining += ret = siphash_3u64(...)
>
> would be an improvement.

This is almost exactly what I suggested in my email on the other
thread from a few seconds ago :)

--Andy