1NDCTL-SETUP-PASSPHRASE(1) ndctl Manual NDCTL-SETUP-PASSPHRASE(1)
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6 ndctl-setup-passphrase - setup and enable the security passphrase for
7 an NVDIMM
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10 ndctl setup-passphrase <nmem0> [<nmem1>..<nmemN>] -k <key_handle> [<options>]
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13 Setup and enable a security passphrase for one or more NVDIMMs.
14 For this command to succeed, it is expected that the master key has
16 previously been loaded into the user keyring. More information on how
17 this can be done can be found in the kernel documentation at: <https://
18 www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/security/keys/trusted-encrypted.html>
19 The passphrase blobs are created in the /etc/ndctl/keys directory with
21 a file name format of "nvdimm_<dimm-unique-id>_<hostname>.blob"
22 The command will fail if the passphrase is already in the user keyring
24 or if a passphrase blob already exists in /etc/ndctl/keys.
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27 <dimm>
28 A 'nmemX' device name, or a dimm id number. The keyword 'all' can
30 be specified to carry out the operation on every dimm in the system,
31 optionally filtered by bus id (see --bus= option).
32 -b, --bus=
34 Enforce that the operation only be carried on devices that are
35 attached to the given bus. Where bus can be a provider name or a
36 bus id number.
37 -k, --key_handle=
39 Handle for the master kek (key-encryption-key) that will be used
40 for sealing the passphrase(s) for the given DIMM(s). The format is:
41 <key type>:<key description>
42 e.g. trusted:nvdimm-master
43 NOTE: The kek is expected to have been loaded into the user
44 keyring.
45 -m, --master-passphrase
47 Indicates that we are managing the master passphrase instead of the
48 user passphrase.
49 -v, --verbose
51 Emit debug messages.
52
54 The Intel Device Specific Methods (DSM) specification v1.7 and v1.8 [1]
55 introduced the following security management operations: enable
56 passhprase, update passphrase, unlock DIMM, disable security, freeze
57 security, secure (crypto) erase, overwrite, master passphrase enable,
58 master passphrase update, and master passphrase secure erase.
59 The security management for NVDIMMs is comprised of two parts. The
61 front end uses the Linux key management framework (trusted and
62 encrypted keys [2]) to store the encrypted passphrases in the
63 kernel-managed keyring. The interface for this is the keyutils utility
64 which uses the key management APIs in the Linux kernel. The back end
65 takes the decrypted payload (which is the DIMM passphrase) and passes
66 it to the DIMM.
67 Unlike other DSMs which are composed by libndctl and sent to the kernel
69 via an ioctl, the security DSMs are managed through the security sysfs
70 attribute under the dimm device. A key-ID is written to the security
71 attribute and the kernel pulls the associated key material from the
72 user keyring that is maintained by the kernel.
73 The security process begins with the generation of a master key that is
75 used to seal (encrypt) the passphrase for the DIMM. There can either be
76 one common master key that is used to encrypt every DIMM’s passphrase,
77 or a separate key can be generated for each DIMM. The master key is
78 also referred to as the key-encryption-key (kek). The kek can either be
79 generated by the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) on the system, or
80 alternatively, the System Master Key can also be used as the kek
81 For testing purposes a user key with randomized payload can also be
83 used as a kek. See [2] for details. To perform any security operations,
84 it is expected that the kek has been added to the kernel’s user keyring
85 as shown in example below:
86 # keyctl show
88 Session Keyring
89 736023423 --alswrv 0 0 keyring: _ses
90 675104189 --alswrv 0 65534 \_ keyring: _uid.0
91 680187394 --alswrv 0 0 \_ trusted: nvdimm-master
92 Before performing any of the security operations, all the regions
94 associated with the DIMM in question need to be disabled. For the
95 overwrite operation, in addition to the regions, the dimm also needs to
96 be disabled.
97 [1] <http://pmem.io/documents/NVDIMM_DSM_Interface-V1.8.pdf>
99 [2] <https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/security/keys/
100 trusted-encrypted.rst>
101 The following sub-sections describe specifics of each security feature.
103 UNLOCK
105 Unlock is performed by the kernel, however a preparation step must
106 happen before the unlock DSM can be issued by the kernel. It is
107 expected that from the initramfs, a setup command (ndctl load-keys) is
108 executed before the libnvdimm module is loaded by modprobe. This
109 command will inject the kek and the encrypted passphrases into the
110 kernel’s user keyring. During the probe of the libnvdimm driver, it
111 will:
112 1. Check the security state of the device and see if the DIMM is
114 locked
115 2. Request the associated encrypted passphrase from the kernel’s user
117 key ring
118 3. Use the kek to decrypt the passphrase
120 4. Create the unlock DSM, copy the decrypted payload into the DSM
122 5. Issue the DSM to unlock the DIMM
124 If the DIMM is already unlocked, the kernel will attempt to revalidate
126 the passphrase. If we fail to revalidate the passphrase, the kernel
127 will freeze the security and disallow any further security
128 configuration changes. A kernel module parameter is available to
129 override this behavior.
130 SETUP USER PASSPHRASE
132 To setup the passphrase for a DIMM, it is expected that the kek to be
133 used is present in the kernel’s user keyring. The kek encrypts the DIMM
134 passphrase using the enc32 key format. The plaintext passphrase is
135 never provided by or made visible to the user. It is instead randomly
136 generated by the kernel and userspace does not have access to it. Upon
137 encryption, a binary blob of the passphrase is written to the
138 passphrase blob storage directory (/etc/ndctl/keys). The user is
139 responsible for backing up the passphrase blobs to a secure location.
140 UPDATE USER PASSPHRASE
142 The update user passphrase operation uses the same DSM command as
143 enable user passphrase. Most of the work is done on the key management
144 side. The user has the option of providing a new kek for the new
145 passphrase, but continuing to use the existing kek is also acceptable.
146 The following operations are performed for update-passphrase:
147 1. Remove the encrypted passphrase from the kernel’s user keyring.
149 2. Rename the passphrase blob to old.
151 3. Load this old passphrase blob into the keyring with an "old" name.
153 4. Create the new passphrase and encrypt with the kek.
155 5. Send DSM with the old and new decrypted passphrases.
157 6. Remove old passphrase and the passphrase blob from the keyring.
159 REMOVE USER PASSPHRASE
161 The key-ID for the passphrase to be removed is written to sysfs. The
162 kernel then sends the DSM to disable security, and the passphrase is
163 then removed from the keyring, and the associated passphrase blob is
164 deleted.
165 CRYPTO (SECURE) ERASE
167 This operation is similar to remove-passphrase. The kernel issues a
168 WBINVD instruction before and after the operation to ensure no data
169 corruption from a stale CPU cache. Use ndctl’s sanitize-dimm command
170 with the --crypto-erase option to perform this operation.
171 OVERWRITE
173 This is invoked using --overwrite option for ndctl sanitize-dimm. The
174 overwrite operation wipes the entire NVDIMM. The operation can take a
175 significant amount of time. NOTE: When the command returns
176 successfully, it just means overwrite has been successfully started,
177 and not that the overwrite is complete. Subsequently, 'ndctl
178 wait-overwrite’can be used to wait for the NVDIMMs that are performing
179 overwrite. Upon successful completion of an overwrite, the WBINVD
180 instruction is issued by the kernel. If both --crypto-erase and
181 --overwrite options are supplied, then crypto-erase is performed before
182 overwrite.
183 SECURITY FREEZE
185 This operation does not require a passphrase. This will cause any
186 security command other than a status query to be locked out until the
187 next boot.
188 MASTER PASSPHRASE SETUP, UPDATE, and CRYPTO ERASE
190 These operations are similar to the user passphrase enable and update.
191 The only difference is that a different passphrase is used. The master
192 passphrase has no relation to the master key (kek) which is used for
193 encryption of either passphrase.
194
196 Copyright (c) 2016 - 2019, Intel Corporation. License GPLv2: GNU GPL
197 version 2 <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software:
198 you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to
199 the extent permitted by law.
200
202 ndctl-update-passphrase(1), ndctl-remove-passphrase(1)
203ndctl 2019-05-10 NDCTL-SETUP-PASSPHRASE(1)