ICMC18: OpenSSL FIPS Module Validation Project: An Update

OpenSSL FIPS Module Validation Project (S23a) Tim Hudson, CTO and Technical Director, Cryptsoft Pty, Australia; Ashit Vora, Acumen Security, United States

Tim was part of OpenSSL before it was called OpenSSL. He's co-founder and CTO at Cryptsoft and a member of the OpenSSL Management Committee (OMC). Co-editor and contributor across OASIS KMIP and PKCS#11 technical committees.

Ashit is the co-founder and lab director at Acumen Security, acquired by Intertek Group last December. He has 15 years of certification and security experience. He is providing advice to OMC on their FIPS validations.

OpenSSL has been through validation 8 times, 3 certificates are still valid. Note the version number of validated modules is not a direct correlation to the actual OpenSSL version number. None of these modules work with OpenSSL v1.1. Cannot update the current modules, as they don't meet new IGs nor power on self test requirements. If you want to do your own revalidation, you have to fix those.

Haven't been able to do FIPS 140, yet, due to being so busy with all of the other features and work that needed to be done first (TLS 1.3, and all of the things in the previous discussion). Needed a good stable base to move forward for TLS 1.3.  The fact that IETF is still finishing TLS 1.3 gave them lots of time to polish the release and add lots of great features and algorithms.

The team is finishing off adding support to TLS v1.3, but it's taking longer than expected. This has delayed the kick off of FIPS validation effort. However, commitment to FIPS validation is unwavering. It is important to the committee. We are doing it a way that we feel is long term supportable, and not an add on.

The idea is to keep the FIPS 140 code to be in a usable state for future updates. There will be a limited operational environments (OEs) tested (previously there were over 140! Doing that many is expensive and time consuming). Will also be only validating limited number of algorithms.  They plan to do source distribution as per previous validations.

At this point in time, there are no plans to add additional platforms to base validation, get it right and make it usable. As new platforms need to be added, other parties can do it independently.  Want to get this solution in place as soon as possible.

FIPS algorithm selection is planned to be functionally equivalent to the previous FIPS module. There won't be a separate canister anymore. It will be a shared library (or DLL) as the module boundary. Static linking will not be supported. It will be an external module loaded at runtime. It will look more like other validations, which should help overall. 

The interface will NOT be an OpenSSL Engine module. Don't want to be constrained by the engine limitations - it will be something else (TBA).

Have already fixed the entropy gathering and RNG.

This won't be a funny standalone release, it will be aligned with a future standard OpenSSL release (once solidified, we will tell you - it will be after the OpenSSL 1.1.0 release).

Will move to FIPS 186-4 key generation, NIST SP 800-56A, added SHA-3 and built in efficiency of POSTs.

Current sponsors: Akamai, NetApp and Oracle. They are contributing to making OpenSSL FIPS a reality. Any other sponsors interested? You need to contact OCM within the next 90 days, you can contact the alias or an individual on the OCM to start.

Next steps: Finalize planning! What functionality is in and what's out? which platforms?  then we have to begin the development process. We expect to publish design documents and have public pull requests for review.  We will be doing incremental development and we aim to minimize the impact on developers. We want feedback earlier from experienced FIPS 140 people and OpenSSL developers.

Adding more sponsors should help speed up the process, as long as they understand this will be an open process and they are willing to work within those constraints.