tree 913660c70807418ddbd6ac883e8dbb46c9cd0edf
parent 920639cab0fe28d003c90b53bd8b66e8fb333bdd
author Daniel P. Berrange <berrange@redhat.com> 1444813118 +0100
committer Daniel P. Berrange <berrange@redhat.com> 1450455908 +0000

crypto: add QCryptoSecret object class for password/key handling

Introduce a new QCryptoSecret object class which will be used
for providing passwords and keys to other objects which need
sensitive credentials.

The new object can provide secret values directly as properties,
or indirectly via a file. The latter includes support for file
descriptor passing syntax on UNIX platforms. Ordinarily passing
secret values directly as properties is insecure, since they
are visible in process listings, or in log files showing the
CLI args / QMP commands. It is possible to use AES-256-CBC to
encrypt the secret values though, in which case all that is
visible is the ciphertext.  For ad hoc developer testing though,
it is fine to provide the secrets directly without encryption
so this is not explicitly forbidden.

The anticipated scenario is that libvirtd will create a random
master key per QEMU instance (eg /var/run/libvirt/qemu/$VMNAME.key)
and will use that key to encrypt all passwords it provides to
QEMU via '-object secret,....'.  This avoids the need for libvirt
(or other mgmt apps) to worry about file descriptor passing.

It also makes life easier for people who are scripting the
management of QEMU, for whom FD passing is significantly more
complex.

Providing data inline (insecure, only for ad hoc dev testing)

  $QEMU -object secret,id=sec0,data=letmein

Providing data indirectly in raw format

  printf "letmein" > mypasswd.txt
  $QEMU -object secret,id=sec0,file=mypasswd.txt

Providing data indirectly in base64 format

  $QEMU -object secret,id=sec0,file=mykey.b64,format=base64

Providing data with encryption

  $QEMU -object secret,id=master0,file=mykey.b64,format=base64 \
        -object secret,id=sec0,data=[base64 ciphertext],\
	           keyid=master0,iv=[base64 IV],format=base64

Note that 'format' here refers to the format of the ciphertext
data. The decrypted data must always be in raw byte format.

More examples are shown in the updated docs.

Reviewed-by: Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrange <berrange@redhat.com>