Re: [PATCH 19/22] crypto: inside-secure - add check for xts input length equal to zero

From: Eric Biggers
Date: Mon Aug 10 2020 - 13:03:09 EST


On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 05:33:39PM +0300, Horia Geantă wrote:
> On 8/10/2020 4:45 PM, Herbert Xu wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 10:20:20AM +0000, Van Leeuwen, Pascal wrote:
> >>
> >> With all due respect, but this makes no sense.
> >
> > I agree. This is a lot of churn for no gain.
> >
> I would say the gain is that all skcipher algorithms would behave the same
> when input length equals zero - i.e. treat the request as a no-op.
>
> We can't say "no input" has any meaning to the other skcipher algorithms,
> but the convention is to accept this case and just return 0.
> I don't see why XTS has to be handled differently.
>

CTS also rejects empty inputs.

The rule it follows is just that all input lengths >= blocksize are allowed.
Input lengths < blocksize aren't allowed.

- Eric