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 paramaters 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
90ignore_zero_blocks
91    Do not verify blocks that are expected to contain zeroes and always return
92    zeroes instead. This may be useful if the partition contains unused blocks
93    that are not guaranteed to contain zeroes.
94
95use_fec_from_device <fec_dev>
96    Use forward error correction (FEC) to recover from corruption if hash
97    verification fails. Use encoding data from the specified device. This
98    may be the same device where data and hash blocks reside, in which case
99    fec_start must be outside data and hash areas.
100
101    If the encoding data covers additional metadata, it must be accessible
102    on the hash device after the hash blocks.
103
104    Note: block sizes for data and hash devices must match. Also, if the
105    verity <dev> is encrypted the <fec_dev> should be too.
106
107fec_roots <num>
108    Number of generator roots. This equals to the number of parity bytes in
109    the encoding data. For example, in RS(M, N) encoding, the number of roots
110    is M-N.
111
112fec_blocks <num>
113    The number of encoding data blocks on the FEC device. The block size for
114    the FEC device is <data_block_size>.
115
116fec_start <offset>
117    This is the offset, in <data_block_size> blocks, from the start of the
118    FEC device to the beginning of the encoding data.
119
120check_at_most_once
121    Verify data blocks only the first time they are read from the data device,
122    rather than every time.  This reduces the overhead of dm-verity so that it
123    can be used on systems that are memory and/or CPU constrained.  However, it
124    provides a reduced level of security because only offline tampering of the
125    data device's content will be detected, not online tampering.
126
127    Hash blocks are still verified each time they are read from the hash device,
128    since verification of hash blocks is less performance critical than data
129    blocks, and a hash block will not be verified any more after all the data
130    blocks it covers have been verified anyway.
131
132root_hash_sig_key_desc <key_description>
133    This is the description of the USER_KEY that the kernel will lookup to get
134    the pkcs7 signature of the roothash. The pkcs7 signature is used to validate
135    the root hash during the creation of the device mapper block device.
136    Verification of roothash depends on the config DM_VERITY_VERIFY_ROOTHASH_SIG
137    being set in the kernel.
138
139Theory of operation
140===================
141
142dm-verity is meant to be set up as part of a verified boot path.  This
143may be anything ranging from a boot using tboot or trustedgrub to just
144booting from a known-good device (like a USB drive or CD).
145
146When a dm-verity device is configured, it is expected that the caller
147has been authenticated in some way (cryptographic signatures, etc).
148After instantiation, all hashes will be verified on-demand during
149disk access.  If they cannot be verified up to the root node of the
150tree, the root hash, then the I/O will fail.  This should detect
151tampering with any data on the device and the hash data.
152
153Cryptographic hashes are used to assert the integrity of the device on a
154per-block basis. This allows for a lightweight hash computation on first read
155into the page cache. Block hashes are stored linearly, aligned to the nearest
156block size.
157
158If forward error correction (FEC) support is enabled any recovery of
159corrupted data will be verified using the cryptographic hash of the
160corresponding data. This is why combining error correction with
161integrity checking is essential.
162
163Hash Tree
164---------
165
166Each node in the tree is a cryptographic hash.  If it is a leaf node, the hash
167of some data block on disk is calculated. If it is an intermediary node,
168the hash of a number of child nodes is calculated.
169
170Each entry in the tree is a collection of neighboring nodes that fit in one
171block.  The number is determined based on block_size and the size of the
172selected cryptographic digest algorithm.  The hashes are linearly-ordered in
173this entry and any unaligned trailing space is ignored but included when
174calculating the parent node.
175
176The tree looks something like:
177
178	alg = sha256, num_blocks = 32768, block_size = 4096
179
180::
181
182                                 [   root    ]
183                                /    . . .    \
184                     [entry_0]                 [entry_1]
185                    /  . . .  \                 . . .   \
186         [entry_0_0]   . . .  [entry_0_127]    . . . .  [entry_1_127]
187           / ... \             /   . . .  \             /           \
188     blk_0 ... blk_127  blk_16256   blk_16383      blk_32640 . . . blk_32767
189
190
191On-disk format
192==============
193
194The verity kernel code does not read the verity metadata on-disk header.
195It only reads the hash blocks which directly follow the header.
196It is expected that a user-space tool will verify the integrity of the
197verity header.
198
199Alternatively, the header can be omitted and the dmsetup parameters can
200be passed via the kernel command-line in a rooted chain of trust where
201the command-line is verified.
202
203Directly following the header (and with sector number padded to the next hash
204block boundary) are the hash blocks which are stored a depth at a time
205(starting from the root), sorted in order of increasing index.
206
207The full specification of kernel parameters and on-disk metadata format
208is available at the cryptsetup project's wiki page
209
210  https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/wikis/DMVerity
211
212Status
213======
214V (for Valid) is returned if every check performed so far was valid.
215If any check failed, C (for Corruption) is returned.
216
217Example
218=======
219Set up a device::
220
221  # dmsetup create vroot --readonly --table \
222    "0 2097152 verity 1 /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 4096 4096 262144 1 sha256 "\
223    "4392712ba01368efdf14b05c76f9e4df0d53664630b5d48632ed17a137f39076 "\
224    "1234000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000"
225
226A command line tool veritysetup is available to compute or verify
227the hash tree or activate the kernel device. This is available from
228the cryptsetup upstream repository https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/
229(as a libcryptsetup extension).
230
231Create hash on the device::
232
233  # veritysetup format /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2
234  ...
235  Root hash: 4392712ba01368efdf14b05c76f9e4df0d53664630b5d48632ed17a137f39076
236
237Activate the device::
238
239  # veritysetup create vroot /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 \
240    4392712ba01368efdf14b05c76f9e4df0d53664630b5d48632ed17a137f39076
241