1=========
2dm-verity
3=========
4
5Device-Mapper's "verity" target provides transparent integrity checking of
6block devices using a cryptographic digest provided by the kernel crypto API.
7This target is read-only.
8
9Construction Parameters
10=======================
11
12::
13
14    <version> <dev> <hash_dev>
15    <data_block_size> <hash_block_size>
16    <num_data_blocks> <hash_start_block>
17    <algorithm> <digest> <salt>
18    [<#opt_params> <opt_params>]
19
20<version>
21    This is the type of the on-disk hash format.
22
23    0 is the original format used in the Chromium OS.
24      The salt is appended when hashing, digests are stored continuously and
25      the rest of the block is padded with zeroes.
26
27    1 is the current format that should be used for new devices.
28      The salt is prepended when hashing and each digest is
29      padded with zeroes to the power of two.
30
31<dev>
32    This is the device containing data, the integrity of which needs to be
33    checked.  It may be specified as a path, like /dev/sdaX, or a device number,
34    <major>:<minor>.
35
36<hash_dev>
37    This is the device that supplies the hash tree data.  It may be
38    specified similarly to the device path and may be the same device.  If the
39    same device is used, the hash_start should be outside the configured
40    dm-verity device.
41
42<data_block_size>
43    The block size on a data device in bytes.
44    Each block corresponds to one digest on the hash device.
45
46<hash_block_size>
47    The size of a hash block in bytes.
48
49<num_data_blocks>
50    The number of data blocks on the data device.  Additional blocks are
51    inaccessible.  You can place hashes to the same partition as data, in this
52    case hashes are placed after <num_data_blocks>.
53
54<hash_start_block>
55    This is the offset, in <hash_block_size>-blocks, from the start of hash_dev
56    to the root block of the hash tree.
57
58<algorithm>
59    The cryptographic hash algorithm used for this device.  This should
60    be the name of the algorithm, like "sha1".
61
62<digest>
63    The hexadecimal encoding of the cryptographic hash of the root hash block
64    and the salt.  This hash should be trusted as there is no other authenticity
65    beyond this point.
66
67<salt>
68    The hexadecimal encoding of the salt value.
69
70<#opt_params>
71    Number of optional parameters. If there are no optional parameters,
72    the optional parameters section can be skipped or #opt_params can be zero.
73    Otherwise #opt_params is the number of following arguments.
74
75    Example of optional parameters section:
76        1 ignore_corruption
77
78ignore_corruption
79    Log corrupted blocks, but allow read operations to proceed normally.
80
81restart_on_corruption
82    Restart the system when a corrupted block is discovered. This option is
83    not compatible with ignore_corruption and requires user space support to
84    avoid restart loops.
85
86panic_on_corruption
87    Panic the device when a corrupted block is discovered. This option is
88    not compatible with ignore_corruption and restart_on_corruption.
89
90restart_on_error
91    Restart the system when an I/O error is detected.
92    This option can be combined with the restart_on_corruption option.
93
94panic_on_error
95    Panic the device when an I/O error is detected. This option is
96    not compatible with the restart_on_error option but can be combined
97    with the panic_on_corruption option.
98
99ignore_zero_blocks
100    Do not verify blocks that are expected to contain zeroes and always return
101    zeroes instead. This may be useful if the partition contains unused blocks
102    that are not guaranteed to contain zeroes.
103
104use_fec_from_device <fec_dev>
105    Use forward error correction (FEC) to recover from corruption if hash
106    verification fails. Use encoding data from the specified device. This
107    may be the same device where data and hash blocks reside, in which case
108    fec_start must be outside data and hash areas.
109
110    If the encoding data covers additional metadata, it must be accessible
111    on the hash device after the hash blocks.
112
113    Note: block sizes for data and hash devices must match. Also, if the
114    verity <dev> is encrypted the <fec_dev> should be too.
115
116fec_roots <num>
117    Number of generator roots. This equals to the number of parity bytes in
118    the encoding data. For example, in RS(M, N) encoding, the number of roots
119    is M-N.
120
121fec_blocks <num>
122    The number of encoding data blocks on the FEC device. The block size for
123    the FEC device is <data_block_size>.
124
125fec_start <offset>
126    This is the offset, in <data_block_size> blocks, from the start of the
127    FEC device to the beginning of the encoding data.
128
129check_at_most_once
130    Verify data blocks only the first time they are read from the data device,
131    rather than every time.  This reduces the overhead of dm-verity so that it
132    can be used on systems that are memory and/or CPU constrained.  However, it
133    provides a reduced level of security because only offline tampering of the
134    data device's content will be detected, not online tampering.
135
136    Hash blocks are still verified each time they are read from the hash device,
137    since verification of hash blocks is less performance critical than data
138    blocks, and a hash block will not be verified any more after all the data
139    blocks it covers have been verified anyway.
140
141root_hash_sig_key_desc <key_description>
142    This is the description of the USER_KEY that the kernel will lookup to get
143    the pkcs7 signature of the roothash. The pkcs7 signature is used to validate
144    the root hash during the creation of the device mapper block device.
145    Verification of roothash depends on the config DM_VERITY_VERIFY_ROOTHASH_SIG
146    being set in the kernel.  The signatures are checked against the builtin
147    trusted keyring by default, or the secondary trusted keyring if
148    DM_VERITY_VERIFY_ROOTHASH_SIG_SECONDARY_KEYRING is set.  The secondary
149    trusted keyring includes by default the builtin trusted keyring, and it can
150    also gain new certificates at run time if they are signed by a certificate
151    already in the secondary trusted keyring.
152
153try_verify_in_tasklet
154    If verity hashes are in cache and the IO size does not exceed the limit,
155    verify data blocks in bottom half instead of workqueue. This option can
156    reduce IO latency. The size limits can be configured via
157    /sys/module/dm_verity/parameters/use_bh_bytes. The four parameters
158    correspond to limits for IOPRIO_CLASS_NONE, IOPRIO_CLASS_RT,
159    IOPRIO_CLASS_BE and IOPRIO_CLASS_IDLE in turn.
160    For example:
161    <none>,<rt>,<be>,<idle>
162    4096,4096,4096,4096
163
164Theory of operation
165===================
166
167dm-verity is meant to be set up as part of a verified boot path.  This
168may be anything ranging from a boot using tboot or trustedgrub to just
169booting from a known-good device (like a USB drive or CD).
170
171When a dm-verity device is configured, it is expected that the caller
172has been authenticated in some way (cryptographic signatures, etc).
173After instantiation, all hashes will be verified on-demand during
174disk access.  If they cannot be verified up to the root node of the
175tree, the root hash, then the I/O will fail.  This should detect
176tampering with any data on the device and the hash data.
177
178Cryptographic hashes are used to assert the integrity of the device on a
179per-block basis. This allows for a lightweight hash computation on first read
180into the page cache. Block hashes are stored linearly, aligned to the nearest
181block size.
182
183If forward error correction (FEC) support is enabled any recovery of
184corrupted data will be verified using the cryptographic hash of the
185corresponding data. This is why combining error correction with
186integrity checking is essential.
187
188Hash Tree
189---------
190
191Each node in the tree is a cryptographic hash.  If it is a leaf node, the hash
192of some data block on disk is calculated. If it is an intermediary node,
193the hash of a number of child nodes is calculated.
194
195Each entry in the tree is a collection of neighboring nodes that fit in one
196block.  The number is determined based on block_size and the size of the
197selected cryptographic digest algorithm.  The hashes are linearly-ordered in
198this entry and any unaligned trailing space is ignored but included when
199calculating the parent node.
200
201The tree looks something like:
202
203	alg = sha256, num_blocks = 32768, block_size = 4096
204
205::
206
207                                 [   root    ]
208                                /    . . .    \
209                     [entry_0]                 [entry_1]
210                    /  . . .  \                 . . .   \
211         [entry_0_0]   . . .  [entry_0_127]    . . . .  [entry_1_127]
212           / ... \             /   . . .  \             /           \
213     blk_0 ... blk_127  blk_16256   blk_16383      blk_32640 . . . blk_32767
214
215
216On-disk format
217==============
218
219The verity kernel code does not read the verity metadata on-disk header.
220It only reads the hash blocks which directly follow the header.
221It is expected that a user-space tool will verify the integrity of the
222verity header.
223
224Alternatively, the header can be omitted and the dmsetup parameters can
225be passed via the kernel command-line in a rooted chain of trust where
226the command-line is verified.
227
228Directly following the header (and with sector number padded to the next hash
229block boundary) are the hash blocks which are stored a depth at a time
230(starting from the root), sorted in order of increasing index.
231
232The full specification of kernel parameters and on-disk metadata format
233is available at the cryptsetup project's wiki page
234
235  https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/wikis/DMVerity
236
237Status
238======
239V (for Valid) is returned if every check performed so far was valid.
240If any check failed, C (for Corruption) is returned.
241
242Example
243=======
244Set up a device::
245
246  # dmsetup create vroot --readonly --table \
247    "0 2097152 verity 1 /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 4096 4096 262144 1 sha256 "\
248    "4392712ba01368efdf14b05c76f9e4df0d53664630b5d48632ed17a137f39076 "\
249    "1234000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000"
250
251A command line tool veritysetup is available to compute or verify
252the hash tree or activate the kernel device. This is available from
253the cryptsetup upstream repository https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/
254(as a libcryptsetup extension).
255
256Create hash on the device::
257
258  # veritysetup format /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2
259  ...
260  Root hash: 4392712ba01368efdf14b05c76f9e4df0d53664630b5d48632ed17a137f39076
261
262Activate the device::
263
264  # veritysetup create vroot /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 \
265    4392712ba01368efdf14b05c76f9e4df0d53664630b5d48632ed17a137f39076
266