IPsec Functionality

BlueField DPU can offload IPsec operations transparently from the host CPU. This means that the host does not need to be aware that network traffic is encrypted before hitting the wire or decrypted after coming off the wire. IPsec operations can be run on the DPU in software on the Arm cores or in the accelerator block.

Please refer to the community post "BlueField IP Forwarding and IPsec SPI RSS" for configuration and tuning instructions for optimal performance results.

IPsec hardware crypto offload, also known as IPsec inline offload or IPsec aware offload, enables the user to offload IPsec crypto encryption and decryption operations to the hardware, leaving the encapsulation/decapsulation task to the software.

Please refer to the MLNX_OFED documentation under Features Overview and Configuration > Ethernet Network > IPsec Crypto Offload for more information on enabling and configuring this feature.

Please note that to use IPsec crypto offload with OVS, you must disable hardware offloads.

IPsec full offload offloads both IPsec crypto and IPsec encapsulation to the hardware. IPsec full offload is configured on the Arm via the uplink netdev. The following figure illustrates IPsec full offload operation in hardware.

Enabling IPsec Full Offload

Explicitly enable IPsec full offload on the Arm cores before setting up offload-aware IPSec tunnels .

1. Set IPSEC_FULL_OFFLOAD="yes"in the mlnx-bf.conf file under /etc/mellanox/mlnx-bf.conf.

2. Restart the driver on Arm:

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   $ systemctl restart openibd
           

To configure IPsec rules, please follow the instructions in MLNX_OFED documentation under Features Overview and Configuration > Ethernet Network > IPsec Crypto Offload > Configuring Security Associations for IPsec Offloads but, instead of the parameter "offload", use "full_offload" to achieve IPsec full offload.

Configuring IPsec Rules with iproute2

The following example configures IPsec full offload rules with local address 192.168.1.64 and remote address 192.168.1.65:

            

            
ip xfrm state add src 192.168.1.64/24 dst 192.168.1.65/24 proto esp spi 0x4834535d reqid 0x4834535d mode transport aead 'rfc4106(gcm(aes))' 0xc57f6f084ebf8c6a71dd9a053c2e03b94c658a9bf00dd25780e73948931d10d08058a27c 128 full_offload dev p0 dir out sel src 192.168.1.64 dst 192.168.1.65
ip xfrm state add src 192.168.1.65/24 dst 192.168.1.64/24 proto esp spi 0x2be60844 reqid 0x2be60844 mode transport aead 'rfc4106(gcm(aes))' 0xacca06b66489011d3c1c21f1a36d925cf7449d3aeaa6fe534446c3a8f8bd5f5fdc266589 128 full_offload dev p0 dir in sel src 192.168.1.65 dst 192.168.1.64
sudo ip xfrm policy add src 192.168.1.64 dst 192.168.1.65 dir out tmpl src 192.168.1.64/24 dst 192.168.1.65/24 proto esp reqid 0x4834535d mode transport
sudo ip xfrm policy add src 192.168.1.65 dst 192.168.1.64 dir in tmpl src 192.168.1.65/24 dst 192.168.1.64/24 proto esp reqid 0x2be60844 mode transport
sudo ip xfrm policy add src 192.168.1.65 dst 192.168.1.64 dir fwd tmpl src 192.168.1.65/24 dst 192.168.1.64/24 proto esp reqid 0x2be60844 mode transport
        

IPsec Full Offload strongSwan Support

BlueField DPU supports configuring IPsec rules using strongSwan 5.9.0bf (yet to be upstreamed) which supports new fields in swanctl.conf file.

The following figure illustrates an example with two BlueField DPUs , Left and Right, operating with a secured VXLAN channel .

Support for strongSwan IPsec full HW offload requires using VXLAN together with IPSec as shown here .

1. Follow the procedure under section "Enabling IPsec Full Offload".

2. Follow the procedure under section "VXLAN Tunneling Offload" to configure VXLAN on Arm.

   Note

   Make sure the MTU of the PF used by VXLAN is at least 50 bytes larger than VXLAN-REP MTU.

3. Enable tc offloading. Run:

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   ethtool -K <PF> hw-tc-offload on
           

   Note

   Do not add the PF itself using "ovs-vsctl add-port" to the OVS.

Setting IPSec Full Offload Using strongSwan

strongSwan configures IPSec HW full offload using a new value added to its configuration file swanctl.conf.

The file should be placed under "sysconfdir" which by default can be found at /etc/swanctl/swanctl.conf.

The terms Left (BFL) and Right (BFR) are used to identify the two nodes that communicate (corresponding with the figure under section "IPsec Full Offload strongSwan Support").

In this example, 192.168.50.1 is used for the left PF uplink and 192.168.50.2 for the right PF uplink.

            

            
connections {
   BFL-BFR {
      local_addrs  = 192.168.50.1
      remote_addrs = 192.168.50.2
 
      local {
        auth = psk
        id = host1
      }
      remote {
        auth = psk
        id = host2
      }
 
      children {
         bf {
            local_ts = 192.168.50.1/24 [udp/4789]
            remote_ts = 192.168.50.2/24 [udp/4789]
            esp_proposals = aes128gcm128-x25519-esn
            mode = transport
            policies_fwd_out = yes
            hw_offload = full
         }
      }
      version = 2
      mobike = no
      reauth_time = 0 
      proposals = aes128-sha256-x25519
   }
}
 
secrets {
   ike-BF {
      id-host1 = host1
      id-host2 = host2
      secret = 0sv+NkxY9LLZvwj4qCC2o/gGrWDF2d21jL
   }
}
        

Note that:

• "hw_offload = full" is responsible for configuring IPSec HW full offload

  Full offload support has been added to the existing hw_offload field and preserves backward compatibility

  Value	Description	Note
  no	Do not configure HW offload, fail if not supported	Existing
  yes	Configure crypto HW offload if supported by the kernel, fail if not supported	Existing
  auto	Configure crypto HW offload if supported by the kernel, do not fail	Existing
  full	Configure full HW offload if supported by the kernel, fail if not supported	New

  Note

  Whenever the value of hw_offload is changed, strongSwan configuration must be reloaded.

  Note

  Switching to crypto HW offload requires setting up devlink/ipsec_mode to "none" beforehand.

  Note

  Switching to full HW offload requires setting up devlink/ipsec_mode to "full" beforehand

• "[udp/4789]" is crucial for instructing strongSwan to IPSec only VXLAN communication

  Note

  Full HW offload can only be done on what is streamed over VXLAN.

Mind the following limitations:

Running strongSwan Example

Notes:

• IPsec daemons are started by systemd strongswan-starter.service

• Use systemctl [start | stop | restart] to control IPsec daemons through strongswan-starter.service. For example, to restart, the command systemctl restart strongswan-starter.service will effectively do the same thing as ipsec restart.

  Warning

  Do not use ipsec script to restart/stop/start.

  If you are using the ipsec script, then, in order to restart or start the daemons, openssl.cnf.orig must be copied to openssl.cnf before performing ipsec restart or ipsec start. Then openssl.cnf.mlnx can be copied to openssl.cnf after restart or start. Failing to do so can result in errors since openssl.cnf.mlnx allows IPsec PK and RNG hardware offload via the OpenSSL plugin.

  • On Ubuntu/Debian/Yocto, openssl.cnf* can be found under /etc/ssl/

  • On CentOS, openssl.cnf* can be found under /etc/pki/tls/

• The strongSwan package installs openssl.cnf config files to enable hardware offload of PK and RNG operations via the OpenSSL plugin

• The OpenSSL dynamic engine is used to carry out the offload to hardware. OpenSSL dynamic engine ID is "pka".

Procedure:

1. Perform the following on Left and Right devices (corresponding with the figure under section "IPsec Full Offload strongSwan Support").

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   # systemctl start strongswan-starter.service
   # swanctl --load-all
           

   The following should appear.

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   Starting strongSwan 5.9.0bf IPsec [starter]...
   no files found matching '/etc/ipsec.d/*.conf'
   # deprecated keyword 'plutodebug' in config setup
   # deprecated keyword 'virtual_private' in config setup
   loaded ike secret 'ike-BF'
   no authorities found, 0 unloaded
   no pools found, 0 unloaded
   loaded connection 'BFL-BFR'
   successfully loaded 1 connections, 0 unloaded
           

2. Perform the actual connection on one side only (client, Left in this case).

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   # swanctl -i --child bf
           

   The following should appear.

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   [IKE] initiating IKE_SA BFL-BFR[1] to 192.168.50.2
   [ENC] generating IKE_SA_INIT request 0 [ SA KE No N(NATD_S_IP) N(NATD_D_IP) N(FRAG_SUP) N(HASH_ALG) N(REDIR_SUP) ]
   [NET] sending packet: from 192.168.50.1[500] to 192.168.50.2[500] (240 bytes)
   [NET] received packet: from 192.168.50.2[500] to 192.168.50.1[500] (273 bytes)
   [ENC] parsed IKE_SA_INIT response 0 [ SA KE No N(NATD_S_IP) N(NATD_D_IP) CERTREQ N(FRAG_SUP) N(HASH_ALG) N(CHDLESS_SUP) N(MULT_AUTH) ]
   [CFG] selected proposal: IKE:AES_CBC_128/HMAC_SHA2_256_128/PRF_HMAC_SHA2_256/CURVE_25519
   [IKE] received 1 cert requests for an unknown ca
   [IKE] authentication of 'host1' (myself) with pre-shared key
   [IKE] establishing CHILD_SA bf{1}
   [ENC] generating IKE_AUTH request 1 [ IDi N(INIT_CONTACT) IDr AUTH N(USE_TRANSP) SA TSi TSr N(MULT_AUTH) N(EAP_ONLY) N(MSG_ID_SYN_SUP) ]
   [NET] sending packet: from 192.168.50.1[500] to 192.168.50.2[500] (256 bytes)
   [NET] received packet: from 192.168.50.2[500] to 192.168.50.1[500] (224 bytes)
   [ENC] parsed IKE_AUTH response 1 [ IDr AUTH N(USE_TRANSP) SA TSi TSr N(AUTH_LFT) ]
   [IKE] authentication of 'host2' with pre-shared key successful
   [IKE] IKE_SA BFL-BFR[1] established between 192.168.50.1[host1]...192.168.50.2[host2]
   [IKE] scheduling reauthentication in 10027s
   [IKE] maximum IKE_SA lifetime 11107s
   [CFG] selected proposal: ESP:AES_GCM_16_128/NO_EXT_SEQ
   [IKE] CHILD_SA bf{1} established with SPIs ce543905_i c60e98a2_o and TS 192.168.50.1/32 === 192.168.50.2/32
   initiate completed successfully
           

   You may now send encrypted data over the HOST VF interface (192.168.70.[1|2]) configured for VXLAN.

Building strongSwan

Do this only if you want to build your own BFB and would like to rebuild strongSwan.

1. strongSwan IPsec full version can be found here (tag: 5.9.0bf).

2. Install dependencies mentioned here. libgmp-dev is missing from that list, so make sure to install that as well.

3. Git clone https://github.com/Mellanox/strongswan.git.

4. Git checkout BF-5.9.0.

5. Run "autogen.sh" within the strongSwan repo.

6. Run the following:

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   configure --enable-openssl --disable-random --prefix=/usr/local --sysconfdir=/etc --enable-systemd
   make
   make install
           

Note:

• --enable-systemd enables the systemd service for strongSwan service present inside github repo (see step 3) at init/systemd-starter/strongswan-starter.service.in. This service file is meant for Ubuntu, Debian and Yocto distributions. For CentOS, the contents of the above file must be replaced by the one present in systemd-conf/strongswan-starter.service.in.centos (inside the github repo) before running the configure script above.

• When building strongSwan on your own, the openssl.cnf.mlnx file, required for PK and RNG HW offload via OpenSSL plugin, is not installed. It must be copied over manually from github repo inside the openssl-conf directory. See section "Running Strongswan Example" for important notes.

  Note

  The openssl.cnf.mlnx file references PKA engine shared objects. libpka (version 1.3 or later) and openssl (version 1.1.1) must be installed for this to work.

IPsec Full Offload and OVS Offload

IPsec full offload configuration works with and is transparent to OVS offload. This means all packets from OVS offload are encrypted by IPsec rules.

The following figure illustrates the interaction between IPsec full offload and OVS VXLAN offload.

To start the service, run:

            

            
systemctl start openvswitch-ipsec.service
        

Refer to section "Enabling IPsec Full Offload" for information to prepare the IPsec full offload environment.

Configuring IPsec Tunnel

For the sake of example, if you want to build an IPsec tunnel between two hosts with the following external IP addresses:

• host1 – 1.1.1.1

• host2 – 1.1.1.2

You have to first make sure host1 and host2 can ping each other via these external IPs.

This example will set up some variables on both hosts, set ip1 and ip2:

            

            
# ip1=1.1.1.1
# ip2=1.1.1.2
REP=eth5
PF=p0
        

1. Set up OVS bridges in both hosts.

   1. On Arm_1:

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      ovs-vsctl add-br ovs-br
      ovs-vsctl add-port ovs-br $REP
      ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . other_config:hw-offload=true
              

   2. On Arm_2:

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      ovs-vsctl add-br ovs-br
      ovs-vsctl add-port ovs-br $REP
      ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . other_config:hw-offload=true
              

      Note

      Configuring other_config:hw-offload=true sets IPsec full offload. Setting it to false sets software IPsec. Make sure that IPsec devlink's mode is set back to none for software IPsec.

2. Set up IPsec tunnel. Three authentication methods are possible. Follow the steps relevant for the method that works best for your environment.

   Note

   Do not try to use more than 1 authentication method.

   Note

   After the IPsec tunnel is set up, strongSwan configuration will be automatically done.

3. Make sure the MTU of the PF used by tunnel is at least 50 bytes larger than VXLAN-REP MTU.

   1. Disable host PF as the port owner from Arm (see section "Restricting DPU Host"). Run:

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      $ mlxprivhost -d /dev/mst/mt41682_pciconf0 --disable_port_owner r
              

   2. The MTU of the end points (pf0hpf in the example above) of the tunnel must be smaller than the MTU of the tunnel interfaces (p0) to account for the size of the tunnel headers. For example, you can set the MTU of P0 to 2000.

Authentication Methods

Using Pre-shared Key

1. On Arm_1, run:

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   # ovs-vsctl add-port ovs-br tun -- \
               set interface tun type=gre \
                             options:local_ip=$ip1 \
                             options:remote_ip=$ip2 \
                             options:key=100 \
                             options:dst_port=1723 \
                             options:psk=swordfish
           

2. On Arm_2, run:

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   # ovs-vsctl add-port ovs-br tun -- \
               set interface tun type=gre \
                             options:local_ip=$ip2 \
                             options:remote_ip=$ip1 \
                             options:key=100 \
                             options:dst_port=1723 \
                             options:psk=swordfish
           

Using Self-signed Certificate

1. Generate self-signed certificates in both host1 and host2, then copy the certificate of host1 to host2, and the certificate of host2 to host1.

2. Move both host1-cert.pem and host2-cert.pem to /etc/swanctl/x509/, if on Ubuntu, or /etc/strongswan/swanctl/x509/, if on CentOS.

3. Move the local private key to /etc/swanctl/private, if on Ubuntu, or /etc/strongswan/swanctl/private, if on CentOS. For example, for host1:

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   mv host1-privkey.pem /etc/swanctl/private
           

4. Set up OVS other_config on both sides.

   1. On Arm_1:

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      # ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . other_config:certificate=/etc/swanctl/x509/host1-cert.pem \
        other_config:private_key=/etc/swanctl/private/host1-privkey.pem
              

   2. On Arm_2:

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      # ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . other_config:certificate=/etc/swanctl/x509/host2-cert.pem \
        other_config:private_key=/etc/swanctl/private/host2-privkey.pem
              

5. Set up the tunnel.

   1. On Arm_1:

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      # ovs-vsctl add-port ovs-br vxlanp0 -- set interface vxlanp0 type=vxlan options:local_ip=$ip1 \
        options:remote_ip=$ip2 options:key=100 options:dst_port=4789 \
        options:remote_cert=/etc/swanctl/x509/host2-cert.pem
      # service openvswitch-switch restart
              

   2. On Arm_2:

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      # ovs-vsctl add-port ovs-br vxlanp0 -- set interface vxlanp0 type=vxlan options:local_ip=$ip2 \
        options:remote_ip=$ip1 options:key=100 options:dst_port=4789 \
        options:remote_cert=/etc/swanctl/x509/host1-cert.pem
      # service openvswitch-switch restart
              

Using CA-signed Certificate

1. For this method, you need all the certificates and the requests to be in the same directory during the certificate generating and signing. This example refers to this directory as certsworkspace.

   1. On Arm_1:

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      # ovs-pki init --force
      # cp /var/lib/openvswitch/pki/controllerca/cacert.pem <path_to>/certsworkspace
      # ovs-pki req -u host1
      # ovs-pki sign host1 switch
              

   2. On Arm_2:

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      # ovs-pki init --force
      # cp /var/lib/openvswitch/pki/controllerca/cacert.pem <path_to>/certsworkspace
      # ovs-pki req -u host2
      # ovs-pki sign host2 switch
              

2. Move both host1-cert.pem and host2-cert.pem to /etc/ swanctl/x509/, if on Ubuntu, or /etc/strongswan/swanctl/x509/, if on CentOS.

3. Move the local private key to /etc/swanctl/private, if on Ubuntu, or /etc/strongswan/swanctl/private, if on CentOS. For example, for host1:

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   mv host1-privkey.pem /etc/swanctl/private
           

4. Copy cacert.pem to the x509ca directory under /etc/swanctl/x509ca/, if on Ubuntu, or /etc/strongswan/swanctl/x509ca/, if on CentOS.

5. Set up OVS other_config on both sides.

   1. On Arm_1:

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      # ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . \
              other_config:certificate=/etc/strongswan/swanctl/x509/host1.pem \
              other_config:private_key=/etc/strongswan/swanctl/private/host1-privkey.pem \
              other_config:ca_cert=/etc/strongswan/swanctl/x509ca/cacert.pem
              

   2. On Arm_2:

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      # ovs-vsctl set Open_vSwitch . \
              other_config:certificate=/etc/strongswan/swanctl/x509/host2.pem \
              other_config:private_key=/etc/strongswan/swanctl/private/host2-privkey.pem \
              other_config:ca_cert=/etc/strongswan/swanctl/x509ca/cacert.pem
              

6. Set up the tunnel:

1. 1. On Arm_1:

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      # ovs-vsctl add-port ovs-br vxlanp0 -- set interface vxlanp0 type=vxlan options:local_ip=$ip1 \
      options:remote_ip=$ip2 options:key=100 options:dst_port=4789 \ options:remote_name=host2
       #service openvswitch-switch restart
              

   2. On Arm_2:

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      # ovs-vsctl add-port ovs-br vxlanp0 -- set interface vxlanp0 type=vxlan options:local_ip=$ip2 \
      options:remote_ip=$ip1 options:key=100 options:dst_port=4789 \ options:remote_name=host1
      #service openvswitch-switch restart
              

Ensuring IPsec is Configured

Use /opt/mellanox/iproute2/sbin/ip xfrm state show. You should be able to see IPsec states with the keyword in mode full.

Troubleshooting

For troubleshooting information, refer to Open vSwitch's official documentation.