LibreSSL: FIPS mode is not coming back

Post by ballard » Wed, Apr 23, 2014, 11:58 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #27

shawn-furyan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got to say that I like the abrasiveness. The security industry is rife with imposters and pretenders. All of the artifice and bogus claims make it very easy for people, organizations, industries... hell, governments to be misled into devoting huge amounts of resources into propping up what amounts to security theater, which is generally actively harmful. Abrasiveness and a willingness to ruffle the feathers of p…

There is hardly a shortage of abrasiveness in the security industry. That said, I find zero things wrong with OpenBSD's work to make LibreSSL. If anyone doesn't like it, I'll offer them their money back.

Post by ballard » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 12:13 AM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #63

Spooky23 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This stance is counterproductive in my eyes. Lots of security standards, including state/local government and some healthcare environments require FIPS compliance. FIPS isn't perfect, but screens out low-quality crypto implementations that most organizations lack the expertise to evaluate. Dual_EC and that ilk is obviously a serious problem, but FIPS validation addresses other pertinent problems -- like my doctor's o…

They point they were making that wasn't clearly elaborated upon is that the code in OpenSSL for FIPS compliance is a charade and is only there to satisfy FIPS requirements. The presence of that code doesn't guarantee or ensure the anything. These compliance standards generally exist to deflect liability in the event of a breech and aren't necessarily there to protect anything. Take PCI for example, much of the DSS re…

Post by ballard » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 12:27 AM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #31

ef47d35620c1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I believe that only binaries can be FIPS certified, not source code, so there are times when one has to use an old, out-dated openssl binary in order to be compliant.

OpenSSL FIPS certification (#1747) is for source code, not for binary. This is highly unusual indeed, but it is not the case that only binaries can be FIPS certified. On the other hand, you can't change the source without losing the certification, so it doesn't actually matter.

Post by ballard » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 12:35 AM UTC

gry wrote: post #52

atonse wrote: post #47

Just looking at the wholesale cleanup [1] makes me shudder to think about how tough the code was to maintain in the past. Kudos to the libssl team for injecting some much-needed energy into such a critical library. If only this were available on GitHub, we could more easily browse the code and learn about patterns and anti-patterns in writing secure code. [1] http://freshbsd.org/search?project=openbsd&q=file.name:lib…

An unofficial mirror: https://github.com/libressl/libressl

Post by ternaryoperator » Thu, Apr 24, 2014, 3:01 AM UTC

forgottenpass wrote: post #33

andrewvc wrote: post #3

The OpenBSD people sure are abrasive, but they deserve a ton of praise for taking on a tough task that no one else was willing to do, and for fixing the damn mess. Between FIPS, the NIST and the OpenSSL foundation it's amazing that crypto even works.

The OpenBSD people sure are abrasive I've said it before, all "opinionated software" is abrasive, the scale is really how much you notice it based on if you like the faces and decisions involved. It'd be non-controversial to the HN crowd, but there are plenty of developers are happy to trash any GPL/share-alike project on the same grounds.