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1 | NOTES, THOUGHTS, and EVERYTHING | ||
2 | ------------------------------- | ||
3 | |||
4 | (1) Concurrency and locking ... I made a change to the ENGINE_free code | ||
5 | because I spotted a potential hold-up in proceedings (doing too | ||
6 | much inside a lock including calling a callback), there may be | ||
7 | other bits like this. What do the speed/optimisation freaks think | ||
8 | of this aspect of the code and design? There's lots of locking for | ||
9 | manipulation functions and I need that to keep things nice and | ||
10 | solid, but this manipulation is mostly (de)initialisation, I would | ||
11 | think that most run-time locking is purely in the ENGINE_init and | ||
12 | ENGINE_finish calls that might be made when getting handles for | ||
13 | RSA (and friends') structures. These would be mostly reference | ||
14 | count operations as the functional references should always be 1 | ||
15 | or greater at run-time to prevent init/deinit thrashing. | ||
16 | |||
17 | (2) nCipher support, via the HWCryptoHook API, is now in the code. | ||
18 | Apparently this hasn't been tested too much yet, but it looks | ||
19 | good. :-) Atalla support has been added too, but shares a lot in | ||
20 | common with Ben's original hooks in bn_exp.c (although it has been | ||
21 | ENGINE-ified, and error handling wrapped around it) and it's also | ||
22 | had some low-volume testing, so it should be usable. | ||
23 | |||
24 | (3) Of more concern, we need to work out (a) how to put together usable | ||
25 | RAND_METHODs for units that just have one "get n or less random | ||
26 | bytes" function, (b) we also need to determine how to hook the code | ||
27 | in crypto/rand/ to use the ENGINE defaults in a way similar to what | ||
28 | has been done in crypto/rsa/, crypto/dsa/, etc. | ||
29 | |||
30 | (4) ENGINE should really grow to encompass more than 3 public key | ||
31 | algorithms and randomness gathering. The structure/data level of | ||
32 | the engine code is hidden from code outside the crypto/engine/ | ||
33 | directory so change shouldn't be too viral. More important though | ||
34 | is how things should evolve ... this needs thought and discussion. | ||
35 | |||
36 | |||
37 | -----------------------------------==*==----------------------------------- | ||
38 | |||
39 | More notes 2000-08-01 | ||
40 | --------------------- | ||
41 | |||
42 | Geoff Thorpe, who designed the engine part, wrote a pretty good description | ||
43 | of the thoughts he had when he built it, good enough to include verbatim here | ||
44 | (with his permission) -- Richard Levitte | ||
45 | |||
46 | |||
47 | Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 16:54:08 +0100 (BST) | ||
48 | From: Geoff Thorpe | ||
49 | Subject: Re: The thoughts to merge BRANCH_engine into the main trunk are | ||
50 | emerging | ||
51 | |||
52 | Hi there, | ||
53 | |||
54 | I'm going to try and do some justice to this, but I'm a little short on | ||
55 | time and the there is an endless amount that could be discussed on this | ||
56 | subject. sigh ... please bear with me :-) | ||
57 | |||
58 | > The changes in BRANCH_engine dig deep into the core of OpenSSL, for example | ||
59 | > into the RSA and RAND routines, adding a level of indirection which is needed | ||
60 | > to keep the abstraction, as far as I understand. It would be a good thing if | ||
61 | > those who do play with those things took a look at the changes that have been | ||
62 | > done in the branch and say out loud how much (or hopefully little) we've made | ||
63 | > fools of ourselves. | ||
64 | |||
65 | The point here is that the code that has emerged in the BRANCH_engine | ||
66 | branch was based on some initial requirements of mine that I went in and | ||
67 | addressed, and Richard has picked up the ball and run with it too. It | ||
68 | would be really useful to get some review of the approach we've taken, but | ||
69 | first I think I need to describe as best I can the reasons behind what has | ||
70 | been done so far, in particular what issues we have tried to address when | ||
71 | doing this, and what issues we have intentionally (or necessarily) tried | ||
72 | to avoid. | ||
73 | |||
74 | methods, engines, and evps | ||
75 | -------------------------- | ||
76 | |||
77 | There has been some dicussion, particularly with Steve, about where this | ||
78 | ENGINE stuff might fit into the conceptual picture as/when we start to | ||
79 | abstract algorithms a little bit to make the library more extensible. In | ||
80 | particular, it would desirable to have algorithms (symmetric, hash, pkc, | ||
81 | etc) abstracted in some way that allows them to be just objects sitting in | ||
82 | a list (or database) ... it'll just happen that the "DSA" object doesn't | ||
83 | support encryption whereas the "RSA" object does. This requires a lot of | ||
84 | consideration to begin to know how to tackle it; in particular how | ||
85 | encapsulated should these things be? If the objects also understand their | ||
86 | own ASN1 encodings and what-not, then it would for example be possible to | ||
87 | add support for elliptic-curve DSA in as a new algorithm and automatically | ||
88 | have ECC-DSA certificates supported in SSL applications. Possible, but not | ||
89 | easy. :-) | ||
90 | |||
91 | Whatever, it seems that the way to go (if I've grok'd Steve's comments on | ||
92 | this in the past) is to amalgamate these things in EVP as is already done | ||
93 | (I think) for ciphers or hashes (Steve, please correct/elaborate). I | ||
94 | certainly think something should be done in this direction because right | ||
95 | now we have different source directories, types, functions, and methods | ||
96 | for each algorithm - even when conceptually they are very much different | ||
97 | feathers of the same bird. (This is certainly all true for the public-key | ||
98 | stuff, and may be partially true for the other parts.) | ||
99 | |||
100 | ENGINE was *not* conceived as a way of solving this, far from it. Nor was | ||
101 | it conceived as a way of replacing the various "***_METHOD"s. It was | ||
102 | conceived as an abstraction of a sort of "virtual crypto device". If we | ||
103 | lived in a world where "EVP_ALGO"s (or something like them) encapsulated | ||
104 | particular algorithms like RSA,DSA,MD5,RC4,etc, and "***_METHOD"s | ||
105 | encapsulated interfaces to algorithms (eg. some algo's might support a | ||
106 | PKC_METHOD, a HASH_METHOD, or a CIPHER_METHOD, who knows?), then I would | ||
107 | think that ENGINE would encapsulate an implementation of arbitrarily many | ||
108 | of those algorithms - perhaps as alternatives to existing algorithms | ||
109 | and/or perhaps as new previously unimplemented algorithms. An ENGINE could | ||
110 | be used to contain an alternative software implementation, a wrapper for a | ||
111 | hardware acceleration and/or key-management unit, a comms-wrapper for | ||
112 | distributing cryptographic operations to remote machines, or any other | ||
113 | "devices" your imagination can dream up. | ||
114 | |||
115 | However, what has been done in the ENGINE branch so far is nothing more | ||
116 | than starting to get our toes wet. I had a couple of self-imposed | ||
117 | requirements when putting the initial abstraction together, and I may have | ||
118 | already posed these in one form or another on the list, but briefly; | ||
119 | |||
120 | (i) only bother with public key algorithms for now, and maybe RAND too | ||
121 | (motivated by the need to get hardware support going and the fact | ||
122 | this was a comparitively easy subset to address to begin with). | ||
123 | |||
124 | (ii) don't change (if at all possible) the existing crypto code, ie. the | ||
125 | implementations, the way the ***_METHODs work, etc. | ||
126 | |||
127 | (iii) ensure that if no function from the ENGINE code is ever called then | ||
128 | things work the way they always did, and there is no memory | ||
129 | allocation (otherwise the failure to cleanup would be a problem - | ||
130 | this is part of the reason no STACKs were used, the other part of | ||
131 | the reason being I found them inappropriate). | ||
132 | |||
133 | (iv) ensure that all the built-in crypto was encapsulated by one of | ||
134 | these "ENGINE"s and that this engine was automatically selected as | ||
135 | the default. | ||
136 | |||
137 | (v) provide the minimum hooking possible in the existing crypto code | ||
138 | so that global functions (eg. RSA_public_encrypt) do not need any | ||
139 | extra parameter, yet will use whatever the current default ENGINE | ||
140 | for that RSA key is, and that the default can be set "per-key" | ||
141 | and globally (new keys will assume the global default, and keys | ||
142 | without their own default will be operated on using the global | ||
143 | default). NB: Try and make (v) conflict as little as possible with | ||
144 | (ii). :-) | ||
145 | |||
146 | (vi) wrap the ENGINE code up in duct tape so you can't even see the | ||
147 | corners. Ie. expose no structures at all, just black-box pointers. | ||
148 | |||
149 | (v) maintain internally a list of ENGINEs on which a calling | ||
150 | application can iterate, interrogate, etc. Allow a calling | ||
151 | application to hook in new ENGINEs, remove ENGINEs from the list, | ||
152 | and enforce uniqueness within the global list of each ENGINE's | ||
153 | "unique id". | ||
154 | |||
155 | (vi) keep reference counts for everything - eg. this includes storing a | ||
156 | reference inside each RSA structure to the ENGINE that it uses. | ||
157 | This is freed when the RSA structure is destroyed, or has its | ||
158 | ENGINE explicitly changed. The net effect needs to be that at any | ||
159 | time, it is deterministic to know whether an ENGINE is in use or | ||
160 | can be safely removed (or unloaded in the case of the other type | ||
161 | of reference) without invalidating function pointers that may or | ||
162 | may not be used indavertently in the future. This was actually | ||
163 | one of the biggest problems to overcome in the existing OpenSSL | ||
164 | code - implementations had always been assumed to be ever-present, | ||
165 | so there was no trivial way to get round this. | ||
166 | |||
167 | (vii) distinguish between structural references and functional | ||
168 | references. | ||
169 | |||
170 | A *little* detail | ||
171 | ----------------- | ||
172 | |||
173 | While my mind is on it; I'll illustrate the bit in item (vii). This idea | ||
174 | turned out to be very handy - the ENGINEs themselves need to be operated | ||
175 | on and manipulated simply as objects without necessarily trying to | ||
176 | "enable" them for use. Eg. most host machines will not have the necessary | ||
177 | hardware or software to support all the engines one might compile into | ||
178 | OpenSSL, yet it needs to be possible to iterate across the ENGINEs, | ||
179 | querying their names, properties, etc - all happening in a thread-safe | ||
180 | manner that uses reference counts (if you imagine two threads iterating | ||
181 | through a list and one thread removing the ENGINE the other is currently | ||
182 | looking at - you can see the gotcha waiting to happen). For all of this, | ||
183 | *structural references* are used and operate much like the other reference | ||
184 | counts in OpenSSL. | ||
185 | |||
186 | The other kind of reference count is for *functional* references - these | ||
187 | indicate a reference on which the caller can actually assume the | ||
188 | particular ENGINE to be initialised and usable to perform the operations | ||
189 | it implements. Any increment or decrement of the functional reference | ||
190 | count automatically invokes a corresponding change in the structural | ||
191 | reference count, as it is fairly obvious that a functional reference is a | ||
192 | restricted case of a structural reference. So struct_ref >= funct_ref at | ||
193 | all times. NB: functional references are usually obtained by a call to | ||
194 | ENGINE_init(), but can also be created implicitly by calls that require a | ||
195 | new functional reference to be created, eg. ENGINE_set_default(). Either | ||
196 | way the only time the underlying ENGINE's "init" function is really called | ||
197 | is when the (functional) reference count increases to 1, similarly the | ||
198 | underlying "finish" handler is only called as the count goes down to 0. | ||
199 | The effect of this, for example, is that if you set the default ENGINE for | ||
200 | RSA operations to be "cswift", then its functional reference count will | ||
201 | already be at least 1 so the CryptoSwift shared-library and the card will | ||
202 | stay loaded and initialised until such time as all RSA keys using the | ||
203 | cswift ENGINE are changed or destroyed and the default ENGINE for RSA | ||
204 | operations has been changed. This prevents repeated thrashing of init and | ||
205 | finish handling if the count keeps getting down as far as zero. | ||
206 | |||
207 | Otherwise, the way the ENGINE code has been put together I think pretty | ||
208 | much reflects the above points. The reason for the ENGINE structure having | ||
209 | individual RSA_METHOD, DSA_METHOD, etc pointers is simply that it was the | ||
210 | easiest way to go about things for now, to hook it all into the raw | ||
211 | RSA,DSA,etc code, and I was trying to the keep the structure invisible | ||
212 | anyway so that the way this is internally managed could be easily changed | ||
213 | later on when we start to work out what's to be done about these other | ||
214 | abstractions. | ||
215 | |||
216 | Down the line, if some EVP-based technique emerges for adequately | ||
217 | encapsulating algorithms and all their various bits and pieces, then I can | ||
218 | imagine that "ENGINE" would turn into a reference-counting database of | ||
219 | these EVP things, of which the default "openssl" ENGINE would be the | ||
220 | library's own object database of pre-built software implemented algorithms | ||
221 | (and such). It would also be cool to see the idea of "METHOD"s detached | ||
222 | from the algorithms themselves ... so RSA, DSA, ElGamal, etc can all | ||
223 | expose essentially the same METHOD (aka interface), which would include | ||
224 | any querying/flagging stuff to identify what the algorithm can/can't do, | ||
225 | its name, and other stuff like max/min block sizes, key sizes, etc. This | ||
226 | would result in ENGINE similarly detaching its internal database of | ||
227 | algorithm implementations from the function definitions that return | ||
228 | interfaces to them. I think ... | ||
229 | |||
230 | As for DSOs etc. Well the DSO code is pretty handy (but could be made much | ||
231 | more so) for loading vendor's driver-libraries and talking to them in some | ||
232 | generic way, but right now there's still big problems associated with | ||
233 | actually putting OpenSSL code (ie. new ENGINEs, or anything else for that | ||
234 | matter) in dynamically loadable libraries. These problems won't go away in | ||
235 | a hurry so I don't think we should expect to have any kind of | ||
236 | shared-library extensions any time soon - but solving the problems is a | ||
237 | good thing to aim for, and would as a side-effect probably help make | ||
238 | OpenSSL more usable as a shared-library itself (looking at the things | ||
239 | needed to do this will show you why). | ||
240 | |||
241 | One of the problems is that if you look at any of the ENGINE | ||
242 | implementations, eg. hw_cswift.c or hw_ncipher.c, you'll see how it needs | ||
243 | a variety of functionality and definitions from various areas of OpenSSL, | ||
244 | including crypto/bn/, crypto/err/, crypto/ itself (locking for example), | ||
245 | crypto/dso/, crypto/engine/, crypto/rsa, etc etc etc. So if similar code | ||
246 | were to be suctioned off into shared libraries, the shared libraries would | ||
247 | either have to duplicate all the definitions and code and avoid loader | ||
248 | conflicts, or OpenSSL would have to somehow expose all that functionality | ||
249 | to the shared-library. If this isn't a big enough problem, the issue of | ||
250 | binary compatibility will be - anyone writing Apache modules can tell you | ||
251 | that (Ralf? Ben? :-). However, I don't think OpenSSL would need to be | ||
252 | quite so forgiving as Apache should be, so OpenSSL could simply tell its | ||
253 | version to the DSO and leave the DSO with the problem of deciding whether | ||
254 | to proceed or bail out for fear of binary incompatibilities. | ||
255 | |||
256 | Certainly one thing that would go a long way to addressing this is to | ||
257 | embark on a bit of an opaqueness mission. I've set the ENGINE code up with | ||
258 | this in mind - it's so draconian that even to declare your own ENGINE, you | ||
259 | have to get the engine code to create the underlying ENGINE structure, and | ||
260 | then feed in the new ENGINE's function/method pointers through various | ||
261 | "set" functions. The more of the code that takes on such a black-box | ||
262 | approach, the more of the code that will be (a) easy to expose to shared | ||
263 | libraries that need it, and (b) easy to expose to applications wanting to | ||
264 | use OpenSSL itself as a shared-library. From my own explorations in | ||
265 | OpenSSL, the biggest leviathan I've seen that is a problem in this respect | ||
266 | is the BIGNUM code. Trying to "expose" the bignum code through any kind of | ||
267 | organised "METHODs", let alone do all the necessary bignum operations | ||
268 | solely through functions rather than direct access to the structures and | ||
269 | macros, will be a massive pain in the "r"s. | ||
270 | |||
271 | Anyway, I'm done for now - hope it was readable. Thoughts? | ||
272 | |||
273 | Cheers, | ||
274 | Geoff | ||
275 | |||
276 | |||
277 | -----------------------------------==*==----------------------------------- | ||
278 | |||