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LUKS

The Cosmian KMS can provision secrets to open Linux LUKS encrypted partitions. The secret never leaves the KMS and can be used to unlock the partition at boot time.

Installing p11-kit and the Cosmian KMS PKCS#11 module

The Cosmian KMS provides a PKCS#11 module that can be used to access the KMS from applications that support PKCS#11, using the p11-kit framework.

With LUKS, the system provided systemd-cryptenroll command must have support for p11-kit which you can check by running systemd-cryptenroll --help and checking for the +P11KIT flag.

 systemd-cryptenroll --version

systemd 253 (253.5-1ubuntu6.1)
+PAM +AUDIT +SELINUX +APPARMOR +IMA +SMACK +SECCOMP +GCRYPT -GNUTLS +OPENSSL +ACL +BLKID +CURL
+ELFUTILS +FIDO2 +IDN2 -IDN +IPTC +KMOD +LIBCRYPTSETUP +LIBFDISK +PCRE2 -PWQUALITY
+P11KIT +QRENCODE +TPM2 +BZIP2 +LZ4 +XZ +ZLIB +ZSTD -BPF_FRAMEWORK -XKBCOMMON +UTMP +SYSVINIT
default-hierarchy=unified

Unfortunately, Ubuntu 22.04 does not provide p11-kit support, however the setup works fine for Ubuntu 23.10.

1. Install the p11-kit package.

Ubuntu 23.10

sudo apt install p11-kit

RHEL 9

sudo dnf install p11-kit

2. Create the PKCS#11 configuration and module directories

sudo mkdir -p /etc/pkcs11/modules

3. Create a configuration file for the PKCS#11 module.

sudo tee /etc/pkcs11/pkcs11.conf <<EOF
# This setting controls whether to load user configuration from the
# ~/.config/pkcs11 directory. Possible values:
#    none: No user configuration
#    merge: Merge the user config over the system configuration (default)
#    only: Only user configuration, ignore system configuration
user-config: merge
EOF

4. Copy the PKCS#11 module to the pkcs11 directory.

sudo cp libckms_pkcs11.so /usr/local/lib/

5. Create a configuration file for the ckms PKCS#11 module.

sudo tee /etc/pkcs11/modules/ckms_pkcs11.module <<EOF
# Cosmian KMS PKCS#11 module
module: /usr/local/lib/libckms_pkcs11.so
EOF

6. Check that the module loads correctly.

> p11-kit list-modules

...
ckms_pkcs11: /usr/local/lib/libckms_pkcs11.so
 library-description: Cosmian KMS PKCS#11 provider
 library-manufacturer: Cosmian
 library-version: x.y
 token: Cosmian-KMS
     manufacturer: Cosmian
     model: software
     serial-number: x.y.z
     flags:
           rng
           write-protected
           login-required
           user-pin-initialized
           protected-authentication-path
           token-initialized

Configuring the access to the KMS

The PKCS#11 module uses the same configuration file as the CLI. Since it may be run as a system user, the configuration file should be made available in /etc/cosmian/kms.json.

See Authenticating users to the KMS to learn how to configure the KMS to use Open ID connect or certificate authentication.

Here is an example configuration file for the PKCS#11 provider library accessing the KMS using a PKCS#12 file for authentication.

{
  "kms_server_url": "https://kms.acme.com:9999",
  "ssl_client_pkcs12_path": "./certificates/machine123.acme.p12",
  "ssl_client_pkcs12_password": "machine123_pkcs12_password"
}

To use Open ID connect, install the ckms CLI from Cosmian packages and use the ckms login command to authenticate to the KMS first.

Creating an RSA key pair using openssl and importing it into the Cosmian KMS

To generate a self-signed certificate with RSA 2048bit key and in PKCS12 format, you can use the OpenSSL command-line tool. Here are the steps:

1. Generate a new private key:

openssl genpkey -algorithm RSA -out private_key.pem -pkeyopt rsa_keygen_bits:2048

2. Create a self-signed certificate:

openssl req -new -x509 -key private_key.pem -out cert.pem -days 365

3. Convert the certificate and private key to PKCS12 format:

openssl pkcs12 -export -out certificate.p12 -inkey private_key.pem -in cert.pem

4. Import the PKCS12 file into the Cosmian KMS using a disk-encryption tag

ckms certificates import -f pkcs12 -t disk-encryption certificate.p12

The private key in the PKCS12 file was imported with id: 6fc631...
Tags:
 - disk-encryption

A tag different from disk-encryption can be used, but it must be set in the in the COSMIAN_PKCS11_DISK_ENCRYPTION_TAG environment variable when enrolling the token (sse below).

Creating a LUKS partition

First allocate some space then create a LUKS partition using cryptsetup.

1. Allocating space for the LUKS partition

LUKS partitions can be created either from disk partitions or from a file.

From a file

Use either dd or fallocate to create a file that will be used as the LUKS partition.

# Create a 1GB file
fallocate -l 1G /path/to/file

Then use path/to/file as the device to encrypt.

From a disk partition

Using parted, determine or create a partition on the disk that you want to encrypt. In this example, we assume the disk is available as /dev/vda.

If needed, use partedto resize the last partition and create free space at the end of the disk.

sudo parted /dev/vda
(parted) print free
Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
        17.4kB  1049kB  1031kB  Free Space
 1      1049kB  1128MB  1127MB  fat32              boot, esp
 2      1128MB  3276MB  2147MB  ext4
 3      3276MB  102GB   98.7GB
        102GB   103GB   1079MB  Free Space

Make a 4th partition /dev/vda4 from the free space at the end.

(parted) mkpart 4 102GB 103GB

2. Creating a LUKS 2 partition on the allocated space

Enter a passphrase to protect the partition when prompted. The encrypted passphrase will be stored in the LUKS header in key slot 0.

sudo cryptsetup luksFormat --type luks2 --key-slot 0 /dev/vda4

Make sure to remember the passphrase, as it will be needed to unlock the partition during cryptenroll or when rotating the RSA keys.

Enrolling the LUKS partition with the Cosmian KMS

Logging of the PKCS#11 module is controlled by the CKMS_PKCS11_LOGGING_LEVEL environment variable. The logging level can be set to trace, debug, info, warn, or error and defaults to info when not set.

The RSA key pair is searched opn the KMS using a tag controlled by the COSMIAN_PKCS11_DISK_ENCRYPTION_TAG environment variable. When not set, the default tag searched is disk-encryption.

1. Verify that Cosmian-KMS token is available for the partition

> sudo systemd-cryptenroll /dev/vda4 --pkcs11-token-uri=list

URI                                                                        LABEL       MANUFACTURER MODEL
pkcs11:model=software;manufacturer=Cosmian;serial=x.y.z;token=Cosmian-KMS Cosmian-KMS Cosmian      software

2. Enroll the partition with the Cosmian KMS

# this is equivalent to
# sudo COSMIAN_PKCS11_LOGGING_LEVEL=info COSMIAN_PKCS11_DISK_ENCRYPTION_TAG=disk-encryption systemd-cryptenroll /dev/vda4  --pkcs11-token-uri=pkcs11:token=Cosmian-KMS
> sudo systemd-cryptenroll /dev/vda4  --pkcs11-token-uri=pkcs11:token=Cosmian-KMS

🔐 Please enter current passphrase for disk /dev/vda4: *************
ckms-pkcs11 module logging at INFO level to file /var/log/ckms-pkcs11.log
Successfully logged into security token 'Cosmian-KMS' via protected authentication path.
New PKCS#11 token enrolled as key slot 1.

3. Verify the enrollment

 > sudo cryptsetup luksDump /dev/vda4

LUKS header information
Version:        2
Epoch:          5
...
Keyslots:
  0: luks2
  ....
  1: luks2
     Key:        512 bits
     Priority:   normal
     Cipher:     aes-xts-plain64
     Cipher key: 512 bits
     PBKDF:      pbkdf2
     Hash:       sha512
     ...


Tokens:
  0: systemd-pkcs11
     pkcs11-uri: pkcs11:token=Cosmian-KMS
     pkcs11-key: 0b 94 e0 ...
...

4. Test attaching the LUKS partition to /dev/mapper/myluks using the Cosmian-KMS token in slot 0

> sudo cryptsetup open --type luks2  --token-id=0 --token-only /dev/vda4 myluks

ckms-pkcs11 module logging at INFO level to file /var/log/ckms-pkcs11.log
Successfully logged into security token 'Cosmian-KMS' via protected authentication path.
Successfully decrypted key with security token.

5. Format the LUKS partition (do this only once)

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/myluks

6. Mount the partition

sudo mkdir /mnt/myluks #only once
sudo mount /dev/mapper/myluks /mnt/myluks

7. Close the LUKS partition

sudo umount /mnt/myluks
sudo cryptsetup close myluks

Automatically unlocking the LUKS partition at boot

To automatically unlock the LUKS partition at boot, you cannot use the /etc/crypttab file because the network is not available when systemd-cyptsetup is run.

You need to create a systemd service that unlocks the LUKS partition at the right time, after the network is available.

1. Create the bash script that unlocks and mounts the partition

sudo tee -a /root/mount_myluks.sh <<EOF
#!/bin/bash
set -e
set -x
# unlock the partition
cryptsetup open --type luks2  --token-id=0 --token-only /dev/vda4 myluks
# mount the partition
mount /dev/mapper/myluks /mnt/myluks
EOF
sudo chmod +x /root/mount_myluks.sh

2. Create the systemd service file

sudo tee -a /etc/systemd/system/mount_myluks.service <<EOF
[Unit]
Description=open and mount the encrypted /dev/vda4 to /mnt/myluks
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/bash /root/mount_myluks.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

3. Enable the service

> sudo systemctl enable mount_myluks.service

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/mount_myluks.service  /etc/systemd/system/mount_myluks.service.
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

4. Reboot the machine to test the service

sudo reboot

The LUKS partition should be automatically unlocked and mounted at boot to /mnt/myluks. Check dmesg, and /var/log/ckms-pkcs11.log for any errors.

Rotating the keys

To rotate the keys used to encrypt the LUKS partition, you can generate a new key pair and import it into the Cosmian KMS.

Then, you can re-enroll the LUKS partition with the new key. You MUST know the passphrase to perform this operation.

1. Wipe the old key from the LUKS partition

sudo systemd-cryptenroll /dev/vda4  --wipe-slot=pkcs11

Wiped slot 1.

2. Revoke the old key from the Cosmian KMS

ckms certificates revoke -k 6fc631...  "revoked"

Successfully revoked: 6fc631....

3. Follow the steps to generate a new key pair and import it into the Cosmian KMS.

4. Enroll the LUKS partition with the new key; you will be prompted for the passphrase

External documentation

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