The dheluks protocol is designed to secure the transfer of a LUKS disk encryption password between a system administrator and a remote server.

Server colocation facilities use serial cables to transfer passwords from serial console to server, despite the fact that they are easily sniffable. dheluks uses the elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman key exchange (ECDH) to create a cryptographically secure channel over the serial cable, which mitigates the threat of transferring a password in the clear.

dheluks is designed to protect against a passive adversary who is monitoring traffic at the serial console or along the serial cable. Security against an active adversary who can intercept and reroute traffic, or against a passive adversary who has access to the internal state of the server, is left to future work.

In this section we discuss how to deploy dheluks on a server running Debian (or a Debian derivative).

The dheluks server-side protocol extends the file /lib/cryptsetup/askpass, which is part of the cryptsetup package. To deploy dheluks on your server, execute the following steps:

1. Clone the repository and move it into your desired build directory.

2. Install the necessary build dependencies:

    apt install build-essential nettle-dev
   

3. Make the dheluks version of askpass:

    make askpass
   

4. Replace the askpass file in your server’s /lib/cryptsetup directory with the new askpass (you may want to keep a copy of the old askpass).

    cp /lib/cryptsetup/askpass{,.no-dheluks}
    mv yourbuildpath/askpass /lib/cryptsetup/askpass
   

5. Rebuild the initramfs for all kernels (you may want to keep a copy of the old initramfs, which lives in /boot):

    cp /boot/initrd.img-$(uname -r){,.no-dheluks}
    update-initramfs -u -k all   
   

6. Reboot the server.

In this section we discuss how to build and use the dheluks client, which must interoperate with a dheluks-enabled server. For administrators running non-Debian derivatives, see Writing a Client below.

A basic dheluks client is included in the dheluks git repository. To deploy the sample client, execute the following steps:

1. Complete steps 1-2 from the server-side deployment.

2. Make the dheluks client:

    make client
   

3. Run the client when you receive a prompt from a dheluks-enabled server:

    ./client
   

and follow the instructions (see Example Run below).

A functional dheluks client must adhere to the dheluks string specification as well as several cryptographic specifications. The dheluks string consists of the dheluks header (currently dheluks:0) followed by a base64-encoded blob that represents either a dheluks prompt, which is issued by the server, or a dheluks response, which is issued by the client.

1. A decoded dheluks prompt MUST contain (in order):

• a 32-byte public key

2. A decoded dheluks response MUST contain (in order):

• a 32-byte public key
• a 12-byte nonce
• a 16-byte ciphertext message authentication code (ciphertext digest)
• a dynamically-sized ciphertext containing the encrypted password

3. A decrypted ciphertext MUST contain (in order):

• a 4-byte header with the number of bytes in the password, represented in network-layer format (use htonl and ntohl for host-to-network and network-to-host layers, respectively)
• the password
• arbitrary padding such that the ciphertext is a multiple of 64 bytes (the ciphertext block size)

4. Cryptographic specifications:

• all operations are performed over Curve25519 with base point X = 9
• private keys are 32-byte scalars
• public keys are 32-byte points on the curve, generated according to ECDH
• encryption and decryption use ChaCha-Poly1305
• nonces are 12-byte scalars
• message authentication codes are 16-byte scalars, generated from the ciphertext digest
• ciphertext size must be a multiple of 64 bytes

These functions and parameters are defined in depth in the dheluks library and the nettle library, which we strongly recommend for building an easily interoperable client.

dheluks prompt (server):

dheluks0:DX+KluJB2yCDk4z1bjqO/vqcd5P457SLsq638mUHo0k=
Please unlock disk vda5_crypt: 

dheluks response (client):

Please enter the server's dheluks string: dheluks0:XhZfnSMXfVI/YNS1HkMzhvZfVWIh5xSmTB3oCQ6jhHY= 

Please enter your password: (no echo)

dheluks0:akVgp3HgbPMXbsRLmQnU/LHGCYlY6HWXkvRCvWXRER0Wb6riTzdQNg9VjFmjlAErth2l3JliLiVjU0ZiXGAmwbvPnOhy07FJy+QcNHDbBYheC1NW1IMpTe0jGuHj4k0X4c75NHzpCbwP8BHKp1IH9ngN2un9UMN8Wx/FAw==

Paste the above string (including header) into the dheluks-enabled server prompt.

On Success:

cryptsetup (vda5_crypt): set up successfully