oxidecomputer / oxidecomputer/crucible

Prototype determinstic sector shuffle

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Dominant language
Rust
Stars
260
Forks
34
Avg merge
2d 1h
Merged PRs (30d)
8

Description

To mitigate against attacks based on changing the ciphertext of a certain sector, I was thinking of implementing a random sector index shuffle based on a deterministic seed. This seed would be part of the "key" material that an Upstairs would be initialized with.

For example, a disk with 8 sectors could be shuffled like so:

shuffle([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], seed) = [6, 4, 1, 3, 2, 8, 5, 7]

This shuffle seed would be unique per volume. Operations Upstairs to sector 1 would instead affect Downstairs at sector 6. An attacker with access to only the Downstairs would need the shuffle seed to be able to target specific sectors.

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Research direction

The issue names no files, tests, or concrete entry point. Start by reviewing how Upstairs and Downstairs are initialized and how key material is represented; the work is complete when a deterministic, per-volume sector shuffle is prototyped and its behavior is validated.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
backend, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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