The conventional wisdom in cryptography is that if you don't know you need FIPS, if you don't have paper and a dollar figure telling you how much you need it, you don't need or want FIPS.
FIPS just locks you into a specific (generally fairly old) version of everything and sets some more annoying defaults. The only benefit is to be able to check a box on a form saying you qualify.
For all those saying that FIPS is a step backwards in crypto, you are right, the standards always lag the state of the art. That said, CMMC is coming into it's own in the US MilGov space, and a LOT of small businesses need to be CMMC compliant, which requires FIPS certified crypto. So having an open sourced FIPS compliant option is a good thing for them. Good on WolfSSL for helping out that space.
I feel like the issue with FIPS is not even the lagging behind, but the fact that FIPS-approved algorithms are often harder to implement than non-FIPS alternatives.
WireGuard itself is the perfect example: ChaCha20-Poly1305 is relatively simple to implement without screwing up. Curve25519 fits as well. Blake2s is fast even with only 32-bit integers.
A good AES implementation without any subtle vulnerabilities is hard. They left plenty of footguns on the table for you. DJB has plenty of criticisms of secp256r1 and similar curves, which is why Ed25519 and Curve25519 exist in the first place.
The algorithms might be fine, but the difficulty and complexity increases the odds that something will go wrong. Even your trusted implementation might have a bug or get one later, and there's more places for those to hide.
Ordinary implementers aren't doing de novo implementations of AES, and the gap between the P-curves and Curve25519 has closed, so this feels like a critique that might have been more germane 10-15 years ago?
In the process of becoming CMMC compliant. Contractor is supposedly "the best in the industry and well respected" but is clearly ignorant of anything beyond the most basic MS AD setup paired with Cisco Gear. My favorite part is the security policies CMMC requires are bonkers like IT needing to evaluate and white list individual websites. So if a worker is doing research and needs to visit dozens of websites you have to do a security audit of the site and white list each one. -OR- you can pay a monthly fee to some rent seeking middle man who maintains a vetted white list. All these policies do is invent new ways for people to grift companies.
The intent of this control is absolutely not to require a whitelist of individual websites.
This control is meant to apply to ports and protocols aka tighten up and document your firewall rules
If you are referring to SI.L2-3.14.7, you also do not need to whitelist websites. A pDNS service helps here but is not required. There are free options available, one of which is offered to small businesses in the DIB through the NSA's CCC program. This also gets you vulnerability scanning and some other stuff, all free.
Let me know if you have any questions. CMMC isnt a cakewalk but it needs to be done right if you don't want to fail your $40k C3PAO assessment :)
I am unfortunately now ignorant in this area. Without going into detail I was partly involved with IT but no longer after a restructuring and "staff reduction." IT duties were fully transferred to the CMMC vendor. The vendor is either ignorant or lying as they may be a reseller or getting kick backs for the white list. Frustrating but I am now powerless.
I know software developers complain about forced compliance due to the security theatre aspects, but I would like to charitably ask from someone who has technical understanding of FIPS-compliant cryptography. Are there any actual security advantages on technical grounds for making WireGuard FIPS-compliant? Assume the goal is not to appease pencil pushers. I really want to know if this kind of effort has technical gains.
There is no security advantages or technical grounds for using FIPS algorithms in a WireGuard clone instead of Chacha / Blake2. It's purely a compliance move. ChaPoly, Blake2, etc, are not known to be broken and we have every reason to believe they are strong.
Getting a crypto module validated by FIPS 140-3 simply lets you sell to the US Government (something something FedRAMP). It doesn't give you better assurance in the actual security of your designs or implementations, just verifies that you're using algorithms the US government has blessed for use in validated modules, in a way that an independent lab has said "LGTM".
You generally want to layer your compliance (FIPS, etc.) with actual assurance practices.
My limited understanding is that issues like being vulnerable to side channel attacks are very difficult to detect. So you have to have shown that the entire development process is safe. From the code to the compiler to the hardware to the microcode, it all needs to be checked. That said it does seem like compliance is a bigger priority than safety.
I presume it's a product strategy to provide a box of "compliant" libraries/services, so other companies can quickly tick and sign a checkbox saying "we use compliant VPN", because someone else is going to look whether the checkbox is ticked and signed, because someone else is going to...
Actual fips compliant (certified) gives you confidence in some basic competence of the solution.
Just fips compatible (i.e. picking algos that could be fips compliant) is generally neutral to negative.
I'm not 100% up to date, so that might have changed, but AEAD used to be easier if you don't follow fips than fips compatible. Still possible, but more foot guns due to regulatory lag in techniques.
Overall, IMO the other top-level comment of "only fips if you have pencil pusher benefit" applies.
If you're considering whether to use a FIPS 140-3 module for your cryptography, consider that FIPS 140-3 is really only for specific compliance verticals. If you don't know whether you need it, you probably don't need it.
So, along those lines, if you wonder whether a package's cryptography should be FIPS 140-3 compliant, then the real question is whether you are a vertical that needs to be compliant. Again, if you aren't sure, the answer is likely NO.
Wireguard exemplifies the superiority of a qualified independent developer over the fractal layers of ossified cruft that you get from industry efforts and compliance STIGS.
So it feels wrong to see wireguard adapted for compliance purposes. If compliance orgs want superior technology, let their standards bodies approve/adopt wireguard without modifying it.
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WireGuard itself is the perfect example: ChaCha20-Poly1305 is relatively simple to implement without screwing up. Curve25519 fits as well. Blake2s is fast even with only 32-bit integers.
A good AES implementation without any subtle vulnerabilities is hard. They left plenty of footguns on the table for you. DJB has plenty of criticisms of secp256r1 and similar curves, which is why Ed25519 and Curve25519 exist in the first place.
The algorithms might be fine, but the difficulty and complexity increases the odds that something will go wrong. Even your trusted implementation might have a bug or get one later, and there's more places for those to hide.
The intent of this control is absolutely not to require a whitelist of individual websites.
This control is meant to apply to ports and protocols aka tighten up and document your firewall rules
If you are referring to SI.L2-3.14.7, you also do not need to whitelist websites. A pDNS service helps here but is not required. There are free options available, one of which is offered to small businesses in the DIB through the NSA's CCC program. This also gets you vulnerability scanning and some other stuff, all free.
Let me know if you have any questions. CMMC isnt a cakewalk but it needs to be done right if you don't want to fail your $40k C3PAO assessment :)
I am unfortunately now ignorant in this area. Without going into detail I was partly involved with IT but no longer after a restructuring and "staff reduction." IT duties were fully transferred to the CMMC vendor. The vendor is either ignorant or lying as they may be a reseller or getting kick backs for the white list. Frustrating but I am now powerless.
Getting a crypto module validated by FIPS 140-3 simply lets you sell to the US Government (something something FedRAMP). It doesn't give you better assurance in the actual security of your designs or implementations, just verifies that you're using algorithms the US government has blessed for use in validated modules, in a way that an independent lab has said "LGTM".
You generally want to layer your compliance (FIPS, etc.) with actual assurance practices.
Actual fips compliant (certified) gives you confidence in some basic competence of the solution.
Just fips compatible (i.e. picking algos that could be fips compliant) is generally neutral to negative.
I'm not 100% up to date, so that might have changed, but AEAD used to be easier if you don't follow fips than fips compatible. Still possible, but more foot guns due to regulatory lag in techniques.
Overall, IMO the other top-level comment of "only fips if you have pencil pusher benefit" applies.
So, along those lines, if you wonder whether a package's cryptography should be FIPS 140-3 compliant, then the real question is whether you are a vertical that needs to be compliant. Again, if you aren't sure, the answer is likely NO.
So it feels wrong to see wireguard adapted for compliance purposes. If compliance orgs want superior technology, let their standards bodies approve/adopt wireguard without modifying it.
[1] Not referring to the fixes.
> XChaCha20-Poly1305 replaced with AES-256-GCM
What could possibly go wrong? It's not like every CTF ever designed has a block cipher or counter mode challenge. /s
If the project wasn't done by WolfSSL, I would have assumed it's a trolling attempt to mock FIPS requirements. But it's not, and that's the problem.