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The FIPS 140-3 Go Cryptographic Module
- aranw 1y agoI’m curious to understand what implications this will have on Go and where it is used? How does this differ to other languages as well? I don’t fully understand what it will mean for Go and its community
- tptacek 1y agoNone; it's an optional package you use when your users require FIPS 140.
- haiku2077 1y agoIt means companies with US government contracts writing Go code can use the standard library crypto package in native Go instead if having to enable CGO and using a crypto library written in C. CGO is kind of a pain in the ass to develop with compared to fully native Go code, especially when cross-compiling (and cross compilation is very common now that ARM is common on both laptops and servers). This also now makes Go a very convenient language to write US Gov software in. If you have never heard of FIPS before ignore this entirely and continue to live in happiness.
- aranw 1y ago> This also now makes Go a very convenient language to write US Gov software in. This is something I wondered. Will we now see even more adoption of Go? Will Go be a more attractive option compared to language X/Yv
- haiku2077 1y agoYeah, honestly, this just rocketed Go to possible one of the best languages to write these services in. You can write a fully self-contained and compliant program using just the standard library, where a lot of other languages need to be linked to a commercial SSL library.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 1y agoIt's interesting and kind of neat in an inside-baseball way that the standard Go cryptographic library (already unusual in the major languages for being a soup-to-nuts implementation rather than wrappers around an OpenSSL) is almost fully NIST-validated; in particular, it means vendors who want to sell into FedGov can confidently build with the Go standard library. Having said all this: nobody should be using crypto/fips140 unless they know specifically why they're doing that. Even in its 140-3 incarnation, FIPS 140 is mostly a genuflection to FedGov idiosyncrasies.
- twoodfin 1y agoWould you say there’s a brown M&M’s aspect (intentional or otherwise) to FIPS-140, or is it all just bowing to the sovereign for his indulgences?
- YawningAngel 1y agoNot really. It isn't hard to use FIPS validated software, it's just annoying to do because most libraries you would want to use aren't FIPS compliant by default for good reasons. If you can get a government contract in the first place you are already administratively competent enough to use FIPS.
- tptacek 1y agoYeah, I don't think there's any malice to any of this; FIPS is just the product of a particularly conservative (backwards-looking, path-dependent) and market-unaccountable standards process. It's like what would happen if JPMC had so much market power that they could make their own cryptographic standard; it would, I am saying, suck ass, without anyone meaning for it to.
- EvanAnderson 1y ago> If you can get a government contract in the first place you are already administratively competent enough to use FIPS. Speaking as a sysadmin for a local government roped into FIPS requirements by way of FBI CJIS compliance I can safely say your assumption of competence is incorrect.
- hamburglar 1y agoThis is huge. I’ve spent years jumping through hoops to get Go projects signed off for FIPS-140 and I always worried that something was going to go wrong and we’d have a compliance nightmare on our hands. They just made it super easy.
- aranw 1y agoDid this make Go a less attractive option compared to other languages then? I’m interested in understanding how this will help Go and the community
- caleblloyd 1y agoYes. Any language that dynamically links to the OS crypto library (like OpenSSL) is more attractive because your Government customer can install your software on their OS with their FIPS compliant OS crypto library. This moves the needle for Go but you still need to cut a FIPS version of your software since this crypto is still statically linked. I like this option quite a bit if the Government customers get on board with it. There are some Go forks maintained by Microsoft and RedHat I believe that do dynamic linking for crypto which requires CGO.
- haiku2077 1y ago> This moves the needle for Go To clarify, you could previously link to an external SSL library (typically something like BoringSSL) and people did do that. However, it makes cross compilation a pain compared to native Go.
- dangoodmanUT 1y agoI think this was in MS Go before, right?
- FiloSottile 1y agoNo, the Go 1.24 native module effort that they talk about in https://devblogs.microsoft.com/go/go-1-24-fips-update/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/go/go-1-24-fips-update/ is this effort, which Microsoft was not involved in. We simply decided to delay the official announcement until the module reached the In Process list. The system libraries approach used by Microsoft Go is cgo based IIUC, and I think derived from Go+BoringCrypto. I understand they are working on migrating their bindings to fit better downstream of the new native mode.
- metaltyphoon 1y ago> and I think derived from Go+BoringCrypto It's based on OpenSSL
- FiloSottile 1y agoYes, it calls out to OpenSSL on Linux and to CNG on Windows. I think, but I am not certain, that at least the OpenSSL cgo bindings are derived from the Go+BoringCrypto ones (which makes sense, since the BoringSSL and OpenSSL APIs are still very similar).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dadrian 1y agoIf DOGE had done nothing other than get rid of FIPS validation, the GDP unlock alone would have solved the debt problem.
- dlock17 1y agoCompanies don't need any additional reasons to skimp out on security. The money could probably be more wisely spent if not following FIPS but without FIPS the average company wouldn't direct that money towards security at all.
- tptacek 1y agoNo. FIPS has literally nothing to do with security.
- dlock17 1y agoI may be thinking more about FedRAMP in general rather than just FIPS140-3, but mandating things like keeping user passwords out of logs is a security improvement. And the average company needs to be dragged kicking and screaming to care about security at all.
- tptacek 1y agoThis is about exclusively using "validated" implementations of specific cryptographic constructions. You can avoid it simply by not encrypting stuff at all, which is an indication of how little it has to do with security.
- hamandcheese 1y ago> You can avoid it simply by not encrypting stuff at all, which is an indication of how little it has to do with security. The consequences of encrypting wrongly quite possibly are worse than if you never encrypted at all.
- firesteelrain 1y agoDoes the use of the library in your application still require the application itself to be FIPS validated? This just makes it a little easier to go through full, validated NIST compliance, right?.
- FiloSottile 1y ago[ Big I am a cryptographer, not your cryptographer disclaimer ] It depends, but if you are targeting Security Level 1 (which is what most folks think about when they think about FIPS 140) you generally don't need your entire application to be validated, only the cryptographic module. So (again, depending on your requirements and on the Operating Environment you deploy to and on what algorithms you use and how) setting GOFIPS140 might actually be all you need to do.
- firesteelrain 1y agoThank you. I will remember this the next time this comes up at work
- bradfitz 1y agoCongrats, Filippo!
- midocon 1y agoThis is at est!
- justincormack 1y agoYes its been a long journey since the early boringssl versions a decade ago.
- midocon 1y agoThis is a test
- SAI_Peregrinus 1y agoThe "Uncompromising Security" section[1] is particularly interesting to me. FIPS-140 compliance usually leads to reduced security, but it looks like the Go team found ways around the main janky bits. It's nice that there's now a FIPS-140 module for FedRAMP that doesn't require avoiding VMs to stay secure, for example. [1] https://go.dev/blog/fips140#uncompromising-security https://go.dev/blog/fips140#uncompromising-security
- p_l 1y agoPart of the issue was that there are multiple FIPS-140 versions, and the Go support is for FIPS-140-3, which is honestly quite updated and less annoying. To the point I actually recommended running our entire environment (for a pretty big cloud company) FIPS-140-3 mode (maybe not fully compliant for everything, but essentially going with "FIPS-140-3 as default but outside of FedRAMP we're not going to consider it a breaking change if it doesn't pass") because the only thing we might really be missing was ChaCha ciphers which mainly would impact clients running from mobile devices or otherwise lacking in power/AES accelleration... and we had no such clients
- jeffrallen 1y ago> although it doesn’t necessarily improve security, FIPS 140 compliance is a requirement in certain regulated environments LOL. At least they don't bury the lede.