Re: RFC/patch 6/6: usb: add hooks up be able to authorize/deauthorize a device from sysfs

Hi David

On Tuesday 24 April 2007, David Brownell wrote:
> Again, what wireless USB talked about (last I read the specs!) was
> purely an *AUTHENTICATION* step ... which I'd exect to work by
> relying on the "access key retention" keystore mechanism.
>
> At which point the standard key management operations would
> handle all of this stuff.
>
> I'd really hate to see USB try to invent its own mechanisms in
> that area.  As you may know, key management is "the" fundamental
> crypto security problem.  It's not something a Linux kernel wants
> to have two bodies of code addressing; or a Linux distro wants to
> need two different toolsets to manage.

This is a generic framework for authorizing/deauthorizing devices; the
authentication part is different (and separate). There are many
different ways I might want to *authenticate* a device in order to make
a decision as if I want to *authorize* it to connect or not; for example:

* Call my friend to verify the serial number of the USB key is the
  right one -> it checks, ergo I authorize

* WUSB connection context established via wired connection (which btw,
  the driver is already on my linuxuwb.org tree)

* Some mechanism someone devised that checks for some PK keys in the
  device and once those check, the device is authorized.

* WUSB connection context establish via numeric authentication (similar
  to bluetooth's, not yet done)

* Any other...

But the common part of all these 'authentication' methods is that they
are not in the kernel (except for helpers) but in user space and are
what you want them to be (ie: you set the policy); the kernel just
helps enforcing that policy.

-- Iñaky

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