Re: [PATCH 08/18] crypto: add crypto tests for single block DES-ECB and DES-CBC

[Eric Blake]

On Tue, Jul 06, 2021 at 10:59:14AM +0100, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> The GNUTLS crypto provider doesn't support DES-ECB, only DES-CBC.

I had to go research these terms; DES-ECB is weaker (each block
encrypted on its own), DES-CBC is stronger (the encryption of later
blocks depend on the earlier text).  Makes sense that GNUTLS has
dropped support for the weaker form.

> We can use the latter to simulate the former, if we encrypt only
> 1 block (8 bytes) of data at a time, using a all-zeros IV. This

using an all-zeros

> is a very inefficient way to use the QCryptoCipher APIs, but
> since the VNC authentication challenge is only 16 bytes, this
> is acceptable. No other part of QEMU should be using DES. This
> test case demonstrates the equivalence of ECB and CBC for the
> single-block case.

Agreed - both on the inefficiency (we're throwing away all the work
spent on chaining the later blocks - thankfully there is only one such
block in our 16-byte challenge), and on the fact that DES should be
avoided where possible (our sole use is due to VNC's less-than-stellar
"security").

> 
> Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
> ---
>  tests/unit/test-crypto-cipher.c | 23 +++++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 23 insertions(+)

Reviewed-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
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