List available methods of encryption for LUKS

encryption

I was searching for a valid and still up-to-date way of encrypting hard disks. After some research I encountered LUKS and decided to give it a shot. So I looked up some examples of how to properly encrypt an HDD with it, like this:

cryptsetup --verbose --cipher aes-xts-plain64 --key-size 512 --hash sha512 --iter-time 5000 --use-random luksFormat /dev/sda3

The –cipher and –hash part of it was most interesting for me, so I tried to inform myself regarding different ciphers and hashes that are specifically usable for LUKS. I couldn't find any useful information besides opening a file which shows the available encryption forms in a machine-friendly formatting for the currently used Linux. But as I was told even this file is probably missing the full extent of all encryption ways besides it being very hard to read for someone who doesn't deal with it on a daily basis, anyway.

My question: is there a full list of ciphers/hashes for LUKS encryption?

One that simply shows me what I can choose…
and maybe gives a short description on what exactly the differences between those different ways are.

Best Answer

That's basically up to your kernel, so "See /proc/crypto" is supposed to be "the answer." The cryptsetup man page says this:

NOTES ON SUPPORTED CIPHERS, MODES, HASHES AND KEY SIZES

   The available combinations of ciphers, modes, hashes and key  sizes  depend
   on  kernel  support.  See /proc/crypto for a list of available options. You
   might need to load additional kernel crypto modules in order  to  get  more
   options.

   For  the  --hash option, if the crypto backend is libgcrypt, then all algo‐
   rithms supported by the gcrypt library are  available.   For  other  crypto
   backends some algorithms may be missing.

However, my /proc/crypto doesn't mention any serpent, or xts(aes), so instead I'd recommend seeing what cryptsetup benchmark reports (and it would show (ram) speeds too). For example:

$ cryptsetup benchmark
# Tests are approximate using memory only (no storage IO).
PBKDF2-sha1       292752 iterations per second
PBKDF2-sha256     221362 iterations per second
PBKDF2-sha512     142010 iterations per second
PBKDF2-ripemd160  277124 iterations per second
PBKDF2-whirlpool  155727 iterations per second
#  Algorithm | Key |  Encryption |  Decryption
     aes-cbc   128b   164.7 MiB/s   164.5 MiB/s
 serpent-cbc   128b   119.5 MiB/s   205.0 MiB/s
 twofish-cbc   128b   163.5 MiB/s   208.6 MiB/s
     aes-cbc   256b   148.4 MiB/s   147.9 MiB/s
 serpent-cbc   256b   128.1 MiB/s   205.3 MiB/s
 twofish-cbc   256b   202.3 MiB/s   213.1 MiB/s
     aes-xts   256b   165.4 MiB/s   145.3 MiB/s
 serpent-xts   256b   150.0 MiB/s   194.5 MiB/s
 twofish-xts   256b   206.4 MiB/s   206.9 MiB/s
     aes-xts   512b   149.4 MiB/s   147.5 MiB/s
 serpent-xts   512b   181.7 MiB/s   195.0 MiB/s
 twofish-xts   512b   207.1 MiB/s   208.6 MiB/s

The hashes are the first few lines (sha1, sha256, sha512, ripemd160, whirlpool). Ciphers are under the Algorithm header.

Looking at what the defaults are gives a good idea of what's considered "pretty good" too:

$ cryptsetup --help|tail -n 8
Default compiled-in key and passphrase parameters:
    Maximum keyfile size: 8192kB, Maximum interactive passphrase length 512 (characters)
Default PBKDF2 iteration time for LUKS: 1000 (ms)

Default compiled-in device cipher parameters:
    loop-AES: aes, Key 256 bits
    plain: aes-cbc-essiv:sha256, Key: 256 bits, Password hashing: ripemd160
    LUKS1: aes-xts-plain64, Key: 256 bits, LUKS header hashing: sha1, RNG: /dev/urandom

And using a higher key size (with --key-size) should only be stronger, if slightly slower. 

   --key-size, -s <bits>
          Sets  key  size in bits. The argument has to be a multiple of 8.
          The possible key-sizes are limited by the cipher and mode used.

          See /proc/crypto for more information.  Note  that  key-size  in
          /proc/crypto is stated in bytes.
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