From: Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos Subject: Re: RFC: Crypto API User-interface Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 16:49:46 +0200 Message-ID: References: <20100907084213.GA4610@gondor.apana.org.au> <20100907140646.GA31921@infradead.org> <20100907141112.GB6903@gondor.apana.org.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Cc: Christoph Hellwig , Linux Crypto Mailing List , netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org To: Herbert Xu Return-path: Received: from mail-qy0-f181.google.com ([209.85.216.181]:34259 "EHLO mail-qy0-f181.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751830Ab0IGOts convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Tue, 7 Sep 2010 10:49:48 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20100907141112.GB6903@gondor.apana.org.au> Sender: linux-crypto-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Herbert Xu wrote: >> > This is what I am proposing for the Crypto API user-interface. >> >> Can you explain why we would ever want a userspace interface to it? >> >> doing crypto in kernel for userspace consumers sis simply insane. >> It's computational intensive code which has no business in kernel sp= ace >> unless absolutely required (e.g. for kernel consumers). =C2=A0In add= ition >> to that adding the context switch overhead and address space transit= ions >> is god awfull too. >> >> This all very much sounds like someone had far too much crack. > > FWIW I don't care about user-space using kernel software crypto at > all. =C2=A0It's the security people that do. Then I'd suggest to not enforce your design over to people who have thought and have interests on that. The NCR api which you rejected (for not supporting kernel keyring - which your design also doesn't!), has specific security goals and protects against specific threats. This design here has been proposed by you quite many times in the past and neither you, nor anyone else bothered implementing it. Now we have two working implementations that offer user-space access to crypto operations, (the openbsd cryptodev port), and NCR, but you discard them and insist on a different design. Maybe yours is better (you have to argue about that)... Probably I'd use it if it was there, but it isn't. regards, Nikos