Features/VirtioCrypto

The virtio crypto device is a virtual crypto device, and is a kind of virtual hardware accelerator for virtual machines. The encryption and decryption requests are placed in the data queue, and handled by the real crypto accelerators finally. The second queue is the control queue, which is used to create or destroy sessions for symmetric algorithms, and control some advanced features in the future. The virtio crypto device can provide seven crypto services: CIPHER, MAC, HASH, AEAD, KDF, ASYM, PRIMITIVE.

Feature maintainers

Gonglei: <arei.gonglei@huawei.com>

Code

• Virtio-crypto specification: Gonglei's virtio.git
• Virtio-crypto linux driver: Gonglei's virtio-crypto-linux-driver.git
• QEMU: Gonglei's qemu.git
• Cryptodev-linux: Cryptodev-linux's website Cryptodev-linux is implemented as a standalone module that requires no dependencies other than a stock linux kernel.

Quickstart

Host:

• Step 1: Use the cryptodev-linux as the client, the cryptodev.ko should be insert on the host.

Cryptodev:

 $ git clone https://github.com/cryptodev-linux/cryptodev-linux.git
 $ cd cryptodev-linux
 $ make; make install

• Step 2: Build qemu with cryptodev-linux support

QEMU:

 $ git clone -b virtio-crypto https://github.com/gongleiarei/qemu
 $ cd qemu
 $ ./configure --target-list=x86_64-softmmu
 $ make

Guest:

• Step 1: Build and install virtio-crypto linux driver.

 $ git clone https://github.com/gongleiarei/virtio-crypto-linux-driver.git
 $ cd virtio-crypto-linux-driver
 $ make;make install

• Step 2: use cryptodev-linux test the crypto functions

Testing

Use the cryptodev-linux module to test the crypto functions in the guest.

$ git clone https://github.com/cryptodev-linux/cryptodev-linux.git
$ cd cryptodev-linux
$ make; make install
$ cd tests
$ ./cipher -

requested cipher CRYPTO_AES_CBC, got cbc(aes) with driver virtio_crypto_aes_cbc
AES Test passed
requested cipher CRYPTO_AES_CBC, got cbc(aes) with driver virtio_crypto_aes_cbc
requested cipher CRYPTO_AES_CBC, got cbc(aes) with driver virtio_crypto_aes_cbc
Test passed

A simple benchmark in the cryptodev-linux module (synchronous encryption in the guest and no hardware accelerator in the host)

$ ./speed
 Testing AES-128-CBC cipher: 
       Encrypting in chunks of 512 bytes: done. 50.42 MB in 5.00 secs: 10.08 MB/sec
       Encrypting in chunks of 1024 bytes: done. 105.53 MB in 5.00 secs: 21.10 MB/sec
       Encrypting in chunks of 2048 bytes: done. 207.50 MB in 5.00 secs: 41.49 MB/sec
       Encrypting in chunks of 4096 bytes: done. 382.42 MB in 5.00 secs: 76.47 MB/sec
       Encrypting in chunks of 8192 bytes: done. 616.17 MB in 5.00 secs: 123.21 MB/sec
       Encrypting in chunks of 16384 bytes: done. 866.86 MB in 5.00 secs: 173.34 MB/sec
       Encrypting in chunks of 32768 bytes: done. 1.11 GB in 5.00 secs: 0.22 GB/sec
       Encrypting in chunks of 65536 bytes: done. 1.29 GB in 5.00 secs: 0.26 GB/sec

Links

• KVM Forum 2015 presentation: virtio-vsock: Zero-configuration host/guest communication (pdf)
• Connectathon 2016 presentation: NFS over virtio-vsock: Host/guest file sharing for virtual machines (pdf)