First DO-178 SOI Audits

As a Cybersecurity company we have to make sure all of our products are state of the art. In accordance, wolfSSL is conducting Stages of Involvement (SOI) audit on our wolfCrypt product.

Last year wolfSSL added support for complete RTCA DO-178C level A certification. wolfSSL offers DO-178 wolfCrypt as a commercial off -the-shelf (COTS) solution for connected avionics applications. The primary goal of this was to provide the proper cryptographic underpinnings for secure boot and secure firmware update in commercial and military avionics. Avionics developers now have a flexible, compact, economical, high-performance COTS solution for quickly delivering FIPS 140-2 validated crypto algorithms can be used in DO-178 mode for combined FIPS 140-2/DO-178 consumption.

Any aviation system development requires Stages of Involvement (SOI) audits to review the overall software project and ensure that it complies with the objectives of DO-178. Originally, DO-178 based development did not require SOI’s, however a problem arose because of divergence between different development organizations and what the certification authorities wanted. As a result, SOI’s have become an informal de facto standard applied to most projects.

To assess compliance, there are four Stages of Involvement. The four stages are:

  1. Planning Review
  2. Design review
  3. Validation and Verification review
  4. Final Review

We have fully completed SOI #1 through #4.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

wolfSSL libest Port

Are you interested in having the best tested cryptography ported to libest? wolfSSL has many ports to various devices and projects. We are constantly working on and expanding our collection of ports and will soon be working on porting wolfSSL/wolfCrypt into libest.

The libest project is a library that implements RFC 7030 (Enrollment over Secure Transport). EST is used to provision certificates from a CA or RA. EST is a replacement for SCEP, providing several security enhancements and support for ECC certificates. Libest is written in C and currently is set up to use OpenSSL 1.0.1.  This port will allow libest to use wolfSSL in place of OpenSSL.

If you are interested in using wolfSSL with libest, or are looking to use wolfSSL with a different open source project, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

Special Offer for NTLM + cURL Users

We hope everyone is enjoying this June weather. We understand due to current circumstances we have been under lockdown and cannot enjoy the weather as we have in the past. It is however a fantastic time to start a new project, or update and get proper support for your existing ones. That is why we are offering a 20% discount on support for NTLM + cURL users this June.

cURL is a computer software project providing a library for transferring data using various protocols. These protocols include (but are not limited to) FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, and more. This version of the cURL library is nearly identical to the original library, except for a major difference: it is available for dual-licensing like many of the other wolfSSL products. Additionally, wolfSSL provides commercial curl support as well as support for wolfCrypt FIPS and FIPS ready.

NTLM authentication is a family of authentication protocols that are encompassed in the Windows Msv1_0.dll. The NTLM authentication protocols include LAN Manager version 1 and 2, and NTLM version 1 and 2. The NTLM authentication protocols authenticate users and computers based on a challenge/response mechanism that proves to a server or domain controller that a user knows the password associated with an account.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

wolfSSL DTLS 1.2 Secure Renegotiation

wolfSSL has added support for secure renegotiation in DTLS 1.2 as defined in RFC 5746. Secure renegotiation is an extension to (D)TLS 1.2 which fixes the vulnerability found in the original specification. Previously, a third party could use renegotiation to inject malicious data preceding valid data from the client. This could be accomplished by establishing a (D)TLS connection with the target server and sending data over this connection. The third party can then intercept a handshake initiation attempt from the client and send this over its already established connection to trigger a renegotiation. The client’s connection is then established over the third party’s connection. From the perspective of the server the client sent data and then initiated a renegotiation. This is dangerous as the application layer could interpret this as a single valid stream of data causing the malicious traffic to be used in the context of the client’s valid traffic.

RFC 5746 (D)TLS Renegotiation Indication Extension creates a cryptographic binding between the renegotiation and the underlying (D)TLS to disallow a man in the middle attack on the secure connection. In a secure renegotiation, the client and server dismiss an invalid renegotiation attempt.

(D)TLS secure renegotiation may be used for example to establish new cryptographic parameters to increase security. It may also be used to request a certificate from the other party to require authentication before completing some action in the application layer.

To use secure renegotiation in wolfSSL use the “–enable-secure-renegotiation” configure option. For more build options refer to the second chapter of the wolfSSL User Manual.

The wolfSSL DTLS 1.2 secure renegotiation implementation is also compatible with our asynchronous module! Use hardware acceleration and don’t wait on pending cryptographic operations! If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

Treck Vulnerabilities

Recently the Treck (https://treck.com/) TCP stack has had some notable vulnerabilities reported. Though this TCP stack is not a part of the wolfSSL software, it is an embedded TCP stack, and we would like to help with notifying the embedded community that if you are using the Treck TCP stack then it should be updated. Attacks from these reports can range anywhere from a denial of service to leaking information. Further reading about the report can be found at the CERT coordinating center site here: https://kb.cert.org/vuls/id/257161.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

New Edwards Curve Algorithms: X448 and Ed448

wolfSSL 4.4.0 introduces new high security elliptic curve algorithms: X448 and Ed448. These algorithms are specified for TLS – RFC 8446 and RFC 8442 – and in NIST drafts FIPS 186-5 and SP 800-186.

These high security algorithms are not only fast but also small – 10KB for the optimised X448 C code on Intel x64! And it’s faster than OpenSSL:

AlgorithmOperationwolfSSL COpenSSL 1.1.1c
ECDH X448Key Gen6409
ECDH X448Key Agree64492635
ECDSA ED448Sign145914339
ECDSA ED448Verify52902388

wolfSSL is nearly two and half times faster than OpenSSL when performing key agreement, three and a third times faster for signing and over two times faster when verifying!

Curve448 is great choice for applications where code size matters; especially compared to P-384:

AlgorithmOperationwolfSSL C Curve448wolfSSL C P-384OpenSSL 1.1.1c P-384
ECDH X448Key Gen64098505
ECDH X448Key Agree644931211455
ECDSA ED448Sign1459143391391
ECDSA ED448Verify529023881842

Curve448 can be used in TLS 1.2 and 1.3 for key exchange and certificates.

Do you need higher security or is code size important? Then you must consider using X448 and Ed448 for your public key operations from wolfSSL!

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

wolfSSL ARM mbed-os Port

With every release of the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library, there are multiple feature additions, port additions, and updates. One of the ports that was added to the wolfSSL library recently was a port to ARM mbed-os! You can checkout the changes for mbed-os port in PR #12997 the ARMmbed/mbed-os github repository (https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbed-os/pull/12997) . While you’re there we would greatly appreciate it if you could “react” to the PR.

Arm Mbed OS is a free, open-source embedded operating system designed specifically for the “things” in the Internet of Things. Mbed OS provides the Mbed C/C++ software platform and tools for creating microcontroller firmware that runs on IoT devices. It consists of the core libraries that provide the microcontroller peripheral drivers, networking, RTOS and runtime environment, build tools and test and debug scripts. These connections can be secured by compatible SSL/TLS libraries such as wolfSSL, which supports mbed-rtos.

A very important note to make here is that we are the source of TLS 1.3 and FIPS Ready and a whole world of hardware encryption support for MBED OS! (not mbedTLS)

The list of reasons to use wolfSSL vs mbedTLS is very long, but here are a few:

  • Reduced code size
  • Commercial grade production TLS / Crypto library
  • FIPS 140-2 certification
  • Supported by original engineers (support@wolfssl.com)
  • Designed for embedded use
  • Performance is better and can be increased further (see ENABLE_WOLF_SPEEDUPS).
  • Fastest vulnerability response time in the industry.
  • TLS v1.3 (can be enabled in mbed-os/blob/wolf/features/wolf/user_settings.h using WOLFSSL_TLS13)
  • Progressive algorithms (SHA3, Curve/ED448, Curve/ED25519, etc…)

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

Fast P-384 in Single Precision (SP)

wolfSSL 4.4.0 introduces new optimised implementations of the elliptic curve P-384. Our Single Precision (SP) math code has been enhanced to support the NIST P-384/secp384r1 curve. If you need higher security public key cryptography then P-384 from wolfSSL is your choice.

wolfSSL now has optimised C implementations that will enhance the performance on any platform while there are assembly optimisations for Intel and ARM chips. As an example of the improvements you will see, take a look at the comparison to OpenSSL when signing and verifying on Intel x64:

AlgorithmBitsOperationwolfSSL SPOpenSSL 1.1.1c
ECC384Sign194931391
ECC384Verify6025 (14384*)1842

*with pre-computation table caching

That’s right, a 14 times improvement in speed for signing and 3.2 times (or 7.8 when using caching) improvement in verification!

Also take look at the performance of the key agreement operation in comparison with high security DH (also optimised in SP.)

AlgorithmBitsOperationwolfSSL SPOpenSSL 1.1.1c
ECC384Key Agree74771455
DH2048Key Agree5162
DH3072Key Agree2128

The P-384 curve key agreement is even faster than 2048-bit DH! High security and high performance are now in reach with the new SP optimised code.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

X509 Certificates with wolfSSL C#

Are you interested in incorporating the best tested cryptography with FIPS certification into your C# project? wolfSSL has a C# wrapper that makes it easy to get started with TLS connections in C# projects. We are constantly working on, and expanding the C# wrapper and have recently added wrappers for inspecting X509 certificates. Now users can view peer certificates with verification callback functions.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

wolfSSL 2019 Annual Report

We not only remained far ahead of our competitors in 2019, but we also proceeded to extend our lead with massive success and growth. We grew our business dramatically, primarily based on our technological superiority and ongoing investments in testing and quality. We delivered TLS 1.3 ahead of the market, MISRA-C cryptography for the automotive market, FIPS for our government consumers and DO-178 for avionics. We also remain the best-tested product on the market, as witnessed by our additional fuzz testing resources from both internal and external sources. We have also been through a number of additional code audits from our large consumers. Finally, we engaged some of the best code auditors and testers in the world to review our code. Lots of testing and lots of eyeballs have come together to produce the best-tested TLS and cryptography code on the market today. Thank you for your interest in wolfSSL! We are off to a great start in 2020 and will strive to live up to your expectations again in the rest of 2020!

Reminder: If your TLS and cryptography provider does not do fuzz testing, you are exposed.

wolfSSL Technical Progress

A total of 4 releases of the wolfSSL embedded TLS library were delivered in 2019, each with bug fixes, enhancements, and new feature additions. Highlights of these releases included:

1. New Hardware and OS Ports

2. New Software Ports!

  • Apache web server (–enable-apache-httpd, WOLFSSL_APACHE_HTTPD)
  • OpenVSwitch
  • Google WebRTC
  • Over 198 new OpenSSL compatibility API added
  • Qt (–enable-qt, –enable-qt-test, WOLFSSL_QT)
  • OpenVPN

3. Updates to Existing Ports

  • Arduino (updated/refactored default settings, improved sketch examples)
  • Xilinx (updates to Xilinx FreeRTOS build)
  • Nginx (updated 1.15.0 patch, added 1.16.1 and 1.17.5 support)

4. Operating System Updates

  • Micrium uC/OS-III (port update, adjustments for static and inline macros)
  • Windows (fixes for custom ECC curves, directory functions)
  • NetBSD (default build and mutex usage)
  • SafeRTOS (fixes for build issues)
  • VxWorks (port updates)
  • Yocto Linux (ease of use improvements, updates, build instructions)

5. Compiler and IDE Updates

  • IAR-EWARM (Cortex-M changes, compiler warning fixes)
  • Renesas CS+ (improve user settings support, updated examples)
  • XCode (Project file update, iPhone simulator on i386 build fixes)
  • Visual Studio (fixes for build warnings, wrapper for snprintf)
  • Cygwin (fixes for visibility tags)

6. TLS 1.3 Updates

  • Better Interop
    • Interop fixes and better version negotiation
  • Better Portability
    • Portability improvements (simplify time requirement, XTIME_MS)
  • Better Testing
    • Additional fuzz testing!
    • Automated testing of select Embedded Targets
    • Better customer testing (known use-cases and configurations)
  • More Cipher Suites
    • Addition of NULL cipher suites (TLS_SHA256_SHA256, TLS_SHA384_SHA384)

7. New Hardware Crypto Support

  • ARM CryptoCell-310 on nRF52840
  • Renesas TSIP on RX65N
  • PKCS#11 support for HMAC, AES-CBC, and RNG
  • Intel QuickAssist v1.7 driver support
  • Intel QuickAssist RSA key generation and SHA-3 support
  • STM32WB PKA ECC signature verification

8. Improvements to Existing Hardware Crypto Support

  • STM32 (improved AES-GCM performance)
  • STSAFE (wolfSSL crypto callback support, better error code handling)
  • TI (updates to existing hardware crypto)
  • NXP mmCAU performance improvements (35-78%!)
  • Crypto callbacks (added 3DES support, improved features)
  • Fixes to Microchip ATECC508/608A, AES-NI, AVX2, ARMv8, devcrypto/afalg, ST CubeMX

9. New and Updated Algorithms

  • Addition of Ed25519ctx and Ed25519ph (sign/verify – RFC 8032)
  • Addition of Blake2s (32-bit Blake2 support)
  • CMS / PKCS#7 Improvements

10. Algorithm Performance Optimization

  • ARM Architecture
    • ChaCha20 using SIMD NEON extension
    • Poly1305 using SIMD NEON extension
    • Curve25519/Ed25519
    • SHA-384/512 using SIMD NEON extension

11. New and Updated Build Options

  • “–enable-ecccustcurves=all” – Enable all curve types
  • “–enable-16bit” – Enable 16-bit compiler support
  • “–enable-rsavfy” – RSA verify only build
  • “–enable-rsapub” – RSA public only build
  • “–enable-armasm” – Updated for ease of use with autotools
  • “–enable-fallback-scsv” – Fallback SCSV, server-side
  • “–enable-titancache” – New session cache size, can hold over 2 million sessions

12. TLS Extension Support Additions and Updates

  • Added TLS Trusted CA extension
  • Added Encrypt-then-MAC for TLS 1.2 and below
  • Ability to disable Signature Algorithms extensions
  • Parsing efficiency improvements to SNI extension
  • Additional error checking when parsing ALPN

13. Single Precision Math Updates

  • Cortex-M support
  • Support for prime checking
  • Specialized implementation of mod exp when base is 2
  • Support for 4096-bit RSA and DH operations

14. FIPS 140-2 Validation News!

  • Support for wolfCrypt FIPS v4.0.0 certificate #3389
  • New “FIPS Ready” initiative
  • Addition of wolfRand build option to configure.ac
  • FIPS 140-2 OE additions
    • HP Imaging & Printing Linux 4.9 running on HP PN 3PZ95-60002 with ARM Cortex-A72 with and without PAA**
      • Includes ARMv8/NEON assembly optimizations w/PPA**
    • Linux 4.4 (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS) running on Intel Ultrabook 2 in 1 with an Intel® Core™ i5-5300U CPU @2.30GHz x 4 with and without PAA**
      • Includes Intel AESNI and RDSEED support w/ PAA**
    • OpenRTOS v10.1.1 running on STMicroelectronics STM32L4R9I-DISCO (Discovery Kit) with a STMicroelectronics STM32L4Rx (no PAA**)
    • Windows 10 Enterprise running on Radar FCL Package Utility with Intel® Core™ i7-7820 @2.9GHz x 4 with and without PAA**
      • Includes Intel AESNI and RDSEED support w/ PAA**
    • Windows 10 running on Intel Ultrabook 2 in 1 with an Intel® Core™ i5-5300U CPU @2.30GHz x 4 with and without PAA**
      • Includes Intel AESNI and RDSEED support w/ PAA**

** (Processor Algorithm Accelerator)

15. Testing

  • Fixes for Coverity, scan-build, and cppcheck reports
  • Enhancements to test cases for increased code coverage
  • More Pull Request and Nightly tests
  • ABI compliance testing for a subset of APIs’

16. Examples

  • New Coldfire MCF5441X NetBurner example
  • New Visual Studio solution for Microsoft Azure Sphere Devices
  • New NXP Kinetis Design Studio (KDS) example project

17. Additional Product Enhancements

  • wolfMQTT (2 releases)
    • Multithreaded support (–enable-mt)
    • Port Updates
      • Visual Studio
      • NXP MQX / RTCS
      • Microchip Harmony
    • Examples
      • New multithread example
      • Azure authentication update
      • Default broker for example
      • New simple client example
      • New non-blocking example
  • wolfSSH (3 releases)
    • Client-side public key authentication support
    • Callback function to the check public key sent
    • SFTP client and server support for Windows CE, Micrium 3, MQX 4.2
    • Port updates for Nucleus and Windows
    • Window size optimizations
    • Better automated and fuzz testing!
    • Updates to non blocking support
    • More examples: Renesas CS+, SFTP
    • Support for AES-CTR connections added
    • Improved interoperability and reliability
    • TCP port forwarding
    • Global request message support
    • Client side pseudo terminal support
  • wolfTPM (3 releases)
    • Support for Microchip ATTPM20
    • Support for Barebox
    • Support for multiple concurrent process
    • Improvements for chip detection, compatibility and startup performance
    • Better testing with new API unit test framework
    • Support for NV with authentication
    • New wrappers and examples for HMAC/AES, ECDHE and PCR
    • Added examples for TLS client/server
    • Stack use reductions
    • Expanded benchmark support
    • Crypto callback flags for FIPS mode and Symmetric options
    • Support for ST33 TPM2_SetMode command (low-power savings)
  • wolfBoot (3 releases)
    • Compile options for Cortex-M0
    • Support for RV32 RISC-V architecture
    • STM32F76x/77x hardware-assisted dual-bank support
    • New HAL support
      • Atmel SAMR21
      • TI CC26X2
      • NXP/Freescale Kinetis SDK
      • RV32 FE310 (SiFive HiFive-1)
      • STM32L0
      • STM32G0
      • STM32F7
      • STM32H7
      • STM32WB55
    • Support for ECC-256 DSA
    • Support for external flash for Update/Swap
    • Anti-rollback protection
    • New Python tools for key generation and signing
    • Ability to move flash-writing functions to RAM
    • Ability for bootloader to update itself
    • TPM2.0 support
      • Integration with wolfTPM
      • Extended STM32 SPI driver to support dual TPM/FLASH communication
      • Tested on STM32 with Infineon 9670
      • RSA 2048 bit digital signature verification
  • cURL
    • New option for commercial support
  • wolfSSL-py (2 releases)
    • Python3 fixes
    • Native feature detection
  • wolfCrypt-py (1 release)
    • Added Ed25519 cipher
    • Added methods for ECC key handling
    • New methods for raw sign/verify on Ed25519
    • RSA new methods: make_key() encode_key()
    • Native feature detection based on wolfSSL build

wolfSSL Top 10 Blog Posts/Technical Announcements

2019 Webinars

  1. The Advantages of Using TLS 1.3
  2. wolfSSL: TLS 1.3, OpenSSL Comparison
  3. Introduction to Secure Boot
  4. Migrating from OpenSSL to wolfSSL
  5. Security in Avionics

wolfSSL Organizational Growth

  • wolfSSL represents one of the largest teams focused on a single implementation of TLS/Crypto worldwide. If you know of anyone who fits the following description, please let us know.
  • We have expanded our customer base considerably, are now securing connections for over 1000 products, have partner relationships with over 30 vendors, and are securing well over 2 Billion connections on any given day, worldwide.
  • wolfSSL increased its presence in Europe with 2 new members to the team in 2019.
  • We got the word out! wolfSSL attended over 62 trade-events (see below). You may ask yourself, why is wolfSSL visiting so many venues? The answer: we are trying to save the world from using bad implementations of Crypto and TLS.

wolfSSL Events and Tradeshows

The wolfSSL team participated in a total of 62 events in 2019, which was up from 50 in 2018 (and 30 in 2017)! As part of these events we were in 44 cities, 18 US states, and 10 countries! The events we participated this last year included:

  1. CES (Las Vegas, NV)
  2. Smart Factory Expo (Tokyo, Japan)
  3. Japan IT Week West (Osaka, Japan)
  4. Embedded Tech India Expo (New Delhi, India)
  5. FOSDEM (Brussels, Belgium)
  6. DistribuTECH (New Orleans, LA)
  7. ET Nagoya (Nagoya, Japan)
  8. Embedded World 2019 (Nuremberg, Germany)
  9. RSA (San Francisco, CA)
  10. Medtec Japan 2019 (Tokyo, Japan)
  11. MtoM Embedded Systems (Paris, France)
  12. Black Hat Asia 2019 (Marina Bay Sands, Singapore)
  13. cURL UP (Prague, Czech Republic)
  14. NXP Tech Days Chicago (Chicago IL)
  15. SIdO (Lyon, France)
  16. Japan IT Week Spring (Tokyo, Japan)
  17. NXP Tech Days MInneapolis (Minneapolis, MN)
  18. IoT Tech Expo Global (London, England)
  19. LinuxFest (Bellingham, WA)
  20. Satellite 2019 (Washington, DC)
  21. NXP Tech Days Seattle (Bellevue, WA)
  22. ICMC (Vancouver, BC)
  23. Internet of Things World (Santa Clara, CA)
  24. ESC Boston (Boston, MA)
  25. Wireless IoT (Tokyo, Japan)
  26. RTCA (Crystal City, VA)
  27. TU Automotive (Zurich, Switzerland)
  28. Risc-V Summit (Zurich, Germany)
  29. NXP Connects (Santa Clara, CA)
  30. Embedded Tech West (Osaka, Japan)
  31. IoT TechExpo Europe (Amsterdam, Netherland)
  32. Sensors Expo West (San Jose, CA)
  33. IoT Security Forum (Tokyo, Japan)
  34. Microchip Master 2019 (Phoenix, AZ)
  35. Black Hat 2019 (Las Vegas, Nevada)
  36. NXP Tech Days (Irvine, CA)
  37. Billington International Cyber Security Summit (Washington, DC)
  38. RIOT Summit (Helsinki, Finland)
  39. NXP Tech Days Boston (Boston, MA)
  40. IoT World Asia 2019 (Singapore)
  41. ST Dev Con (Santa Clara, CA)
  42. FACE Consortium (Dayton, OH)
  43. Federal Identity Forum (Tampa, FL)
  44. ST Tech Tour (Vancouver, BC)
  45. ArmTech Con (San Jose, CA)
  46. NXP Tech Days Detroit (Detroit, MI)
  47. Japan IT Week Autumn (Chiba Makuhari Messe, Japan
  48. ST Tech Tour (Minneapolis, MN)
  49. Xilinx XSWG (Longmont, CO)
  50. Embedded Conference Scandinavia (Stokholm, Sweden)
  51. ETSI/IQC Quantum Safe Cryptography Workshop (Seattle, WA)
  52. ST Tech Tour (Boston, MA)
  53. NXP Tech Days Toronto (Toronto, Canada)
  54. Xilinx XWSG (Herndon, VA)
  55. IoT Tech Expo North America (Stanta Clara, CA)
  56. Embedded Technology/IoT Technology East (Pacifico Yokohama, Japan)
  57. Open Source Conference (Tokyo, Japan)
  58. Embedded Software Engineering Kongress (Sindelfingen, Germany)
  59. Xilinx XWSG (Munich, Germany)
  60. ARM Tech Symposium (Tokyo, Japan)
  61. RSC-V Summit (San Jose, CA)
  62. Tron Show (Tokyo, Japan)

In summary, we had a great year! 2019 was successful on multiple fronts, and we look forward to serving our customers and community with ever more secure and functional software in 2020.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

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