linux-next/Documentation/device-mapper/verity.txt

dm-verity
==========

Device-Mapper's "verity" target provides transparent integrity checking of
block devices using a cryptographic digest provided by the kernel crypto API.
This target is read-only.

Construction Parameters
=======================
    <version> <dev> <hash_dev> <hash_start>
    <data_block_size> <hash_block_size>
    <num_data_blocks> <hash_start_block>
    <algorithm> <digest> <salt>

<version>
    This is the version number of the on-disk format.

    0 is the original format used in the Chromium OS.
	The salt is appended when hashing, digests are stored continuously and
	the rest of the block is padded with zeros.

    1 is the current format that should be used for new devices.
	The salt is prepended when hashing and each digest is
	padded with zeros to the power of two.

<dev>
    This is the device containing the data the integrity of which needs to be
    checked.  It may be specified as a path, like /dev/sdaX, or a device number,
    <major>:<minor>.

<hash_dev>
    This is the device that that supplies the hash tree data.  It may be
    specified similarly to the device path and may be the same device.  If the
    same device is used, the hash_start should be outside of the dm-verity
    configured device size.

<data_block_size>
    The block size on a data device.  Each block corresponds to one digest on
    the hash device.

<hash_block_size>
    The size of a hash block.

<num_data_blocks>
    The number of data blocks on the data device.  Additional blocks are
    inaccessible.  You can place hashes to the same partition as data, in this
    case hashes are placed after <num_data_blocks>.

<hash_start_block>
    This is the offset, in <hash_block_size>-blocks, from the start of hash_dev
    to the root block of the hash tree.

<algorithm>
    The cryptographic hash algorithm used for this device.  This should
    be the name of the algorithm, like "sha1".

<digest>
    The hexadecimal encoding of the cryptographic hash of the root hash block
    and the salt.  This hash should be trusted as there is no other authenticity
    beyond this point.

<salt>
    The hexadecimal encoding of the salt value.

Theory of operation
===================

dm-verity is meant to be setup as part of a verified boot path.  This
may be anything ranging from a boot using tboot or trustedgrub to just
booting from a known-good device (like a USB drive or CD).

When a dm-verity device is configured, it is expected that the caller
has been authenticated in some way (cryptographic signatures, etc).
After instantiation, all hashes will be verified on-demand during
disk access.  If they cannot be verified up to the root node of the
tree, the root hash, then the I/O will fail.  This should identify
tampering with any data on the device and the hash data.

Cryptographic hashes are used to assert the integrity of the device on a
per-block basis.  This allows for a lightweight hash computation on first read
into the page cache.  Block hashes are stored linearly-aligned to the nearest
block the size of a page.

Hash Tree
---------

Each node in the tree is a cryptographic hash.  If it is a leaf node, the hash
is of some block data on disk.  If it is an intermediary node, then the hash is
of a number of child nodes.

Each entry in the tree is a collection of neighboring nodes that fit in one
block.  The number is determined based on block_size and the size of the
selected cryptographic digest algorithm.  The hashes are linearly-ordered in
this entry and any unaligned trailing space is ignored but included when
calculating the parent node.

The tree looks something like:

alg = sha256, num_blocks = 32768, block_size = 4096

                                 [   root    ]
                                /    . . .    \
                     [entry_0]                 [entry_1]
                    /  . . .  \                 . . .   \
         [entry_0_0]   . . .  [entry_0_127]    . . . .  [entry_1_127]
           / ... \             /   . . .  \             /           \
     blk_0 ... blk_127  blk_16256   blk_16383      blk_32640 . . . blk_32767


On-disk format
==============

Below is the recommended on-disk format. The verity kernel code does not
read the on-disk header. It only reads the hash blocks which directly
follow the header. It is expected that a user-space tool will verify the
integrity of the verity_header and then call dmsetup with the correct
parameters. Alternatively, the header can be omitted and the dmsetup
parameters can be passed via the kernel command-line in a rooted chain
of trust where the command-line is verified.

The on-disk format is especially useful in cases where the hash blocks
are on a separate partition. The magic number allows easy identification
of the partition contents. Alternatively, the hash blocks can be stored
in the same partition as the data to be verified. In such a configuration
the filesystem on the partition would be sized a little smaller than
the full-partition, leaving room for the hash blocks.

struct superblock {
	uint8_t signature[8]
		"verity\0\0";

	uint8_t version;
		1 - current format

	uint8_t data_block_bits;
		log2(data block size)

	uint8_t hash_block_bits;
		log2(hash block size)

	uint8_t pad1[1];
		zero padding

	uint16_t salt_size;
		big-endian salt size

	uint8_t pad2[2];
		zero padding

	uint32_t data_blocks_hi;
		big-endian high 32 bits of the 64-bit number of data blocks

	uint32_t data_blocks_lo;
		big-endian low 32 bits of the 64-bit number of data blocks

	uint8_t algorithm[16];
		cryptographic algorithm

	uint8_t salt[384];
		salt (the salt size is specified above)

	uint8_t pad3[88];
		zero padding to 512-byte boundary
}

Directly following the header (and with sector number padded to the next hash
block boundary) are the hash blocks which are stored a depth at a time
(starting from the root), sorted in order of increasing index.

Status
======
V (for Valid) is returned if every check performed so far was valid.
If any check failed, C (for Corruption) is returned.

Example
=======

Setup a device:
  dmsetup create vroot --table \
    "0 2097152 "\
    "verity 1 /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 4096 4096 2097152 1 "\
    "4392712ba01368efdf14b05c76f9e4df0d53664630b5d48632ed17a137f39076 "\
    "1234000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000"

A command line tool veritysetup is available to compute or verify
the hash tree or activate the kernel driver.  This is available from
the LVM2 upstream repository and may be supplied as a package called
device-mapper-verity-tools:
    git://sources.redhat.com/git/lvm2
    http://sourceware.org/git/?p=lvm2.git
    http://sourceware.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/LVM2/verity?cvsroot=lvm2

veritysetup -a vroot /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 \
	4392712ba01368efdf14b05c76f9e4df0d53664630b5d48632ed17a137f39076