3 ms·
> “FIPS mode” is a thing provided by OpenSSL that, well, makes it more secure A well-configured system would either be unchanged or be made less secure by enab
by josephcsible 3y ago
> “FIPS mode” is a thing provided by OpenSSL that, well, makes it more secure
A well-configured system would either be unchanged or be made less secure by enabling FIPS mode. Nobody should ever use it without a legal requirement to do so.
- gleenn 3y agoHow would it become less secure? Because newer crypto algos aren't in the set allowed by FIPS?
- hedora 3y agoFIPS usually implies a bunch of counterproductive architectural decisions and makes it harder/slower to produce security patches. Also, FIPS used to mandate support for an almost-certainly-backdoored cryptographically secure random number generator, and continued to do so well after it was obviously flawed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG
- patmorgan23 3y agoFIPS is designed for standardization/predictability/interoperability not Security. The only reason to turn it on is if you have a regulatory requirement to do so.
- josephcsible 3y agoLots of reasons. Yours is one, and another is that FIPS disallows you from patching security vulnerabilities in a timely manner.
- Nursie 3y agoLast time I had a FIPS project, which is a long old time now, activating FIPS mode meant disabling weak ciphers but it also meant disabling stuff like DH/DHE key exchange. It seemed to be like that because it's government, and they may want to decode their traffic at a future date, for auditing or leak detection, so 'PFS' measures were not allowed. I am talking about FIPS 140-2 though, and almost 20 years ago!
- starkparker 3y agoIt was still the case a few years ago. I remember working on a client-server application and documenting FIPS requirements hasn't changed all that much.