Adiantum File-System Encryption Support Ready For Linux 4.21

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Storage on 10 December 2018 at 09:48 AM EST. 1 Comment
LINUX STORAGE
Adiantum, Google's newly developed crypto algorithm to replace their planned use of the controversial Speck, is ready to begin providing speedy file-system encryption support for low-end devices with the upcoming Linux 4.21 merge window.

Adiantum is intended to be eventually used by low-end Android Go devices where their limited SoCs don't provide any hardware crypto extensions. As covered back in November, Adiantum was added to the Linux kernel's crypto subsystem is staging it ahead of Linux 4.21.

Besides the Adiantum implementation in the cryptography area, Adiantum has now been added to fscrypt -- the file-system encryption framework. Fscrypt is the file-system encryption code utilized in turn currently by the EXT4 and F2FS file-systems. Fscrypt up to now has supported AES-256-XTS and AES-128-CBC for file contents and AES-256-CTS-CBS/AES-128-CTS-CBC for filenames while now Adiantum is supported for encrypting both file contents and their names.

On low-end ARM hardware like the A7, Adiantum should be about four times faster than AES-256-XTS while data decryption is about five times faster. Adiantum builds off XChaCha12.

The Adiantum Fscrypt code is currently staged in its tree until the Linux 4.21 merge window opens up around Christmas.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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