RECENT BLOG NEWS

At wolfSSL we try to be progressive with our support of new cryptography technology. We were the first TLS implementation to support DTLS v1.2 and we were the first embedded TLS implementation to support TLS v1.3.

There has been a lot of buzz in the media recently about “post-quantum” cryptography. This is mostly about which public key algorithms we will use in the near future. Soon, a large enough quantum computer will be built that can run Shor’s algorithm. It will almost instantaneously find factors for really large numbers, like RSA keys or points on elliptic curves. This is a serious problem for network security that is a matter of when it will happen, not if. We will need new algorithms that don’t depend on multiplying large numbers.

One contender for the future of public key cryptography immune to Shor’s algorithm and quantum computers is in the field of lattice mathematics. There exists a set of algorithms based on the work done by Security Innovation and their algorithm NTRU. You can configure wolfSSL to take advantage of Security Innovation’s NTRU library.

To take advantage of NTRU and other quantum safe public key operations in TLS, some extensions have been proposed for inclusion with TLS v1.3 and TLS v1.2 for Quantum Safe Hybrid, or QSH. These allow one to use one-time quantum-safe key pairs in addition to existing certificates.

The future on the cryptography landscape is scary and exciting. We at wolfSSL Inc want to help you navigate these dangers with cutting edge technologies like NTRU and other quantum computing safe algorithms.

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

The MQTT Sensor Network standard provides a lightweight networking protocol perfectly suited for low cost, low power hardware. The protocol allows using small topic identifiers in place of the full topic name when sending and receiving publish data.

The wolfMQTT SN Client implementation is based on the OASIS MQTT-SN v1.2 specification. The SN API is configured with the --enable-sn option. There is a separate API for the sensor network API, which all begin with the “SN_” prefix. The wolfMQTT SN Client operates over UDP, which is distinct from the wolfMQTT clients that use TCP. The following features are supported by the wolfMQTT SN Client:

• Register
• Will topic and message set up
• Will topic and message update
• All QoS levels
• Variable-sized packet length field

You can download the latest release of wolfMQTT from our website or clone the repository from GitHub.

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

With the recent release of wolfSSL 4.1.0, the wolfSSL team has also updated the wolfSSL FIPS Ready library. This product features new, state of the art concepts and technology. In a single sentence, wolfSSL FIPS Ready is a testable and free to download open source embedded SSL/TLS library with support for FIPS validation, with FIPS enabled cryptography layer code included in the wolfSSL source tree. To further elaborate on what FIPS Ready really means, you do not get a FIPS certificate and you are not FIPS approved. FIPS Ready means that you have included the FIPS code into your build and that you are operating according to the FIPS enforced best practices of default entry point, and Power On Self Test (POST).

FIPS validation is a government certification for cryptographic modules that states the module in question has undergone thorough and rigorous testing to be certified. FIPS validation specifies that a software/encryption module is able to be used within or alongside government systems. The most recent FIPS specification is 140-2, with various levels of security offered (1-5). Currently, wolfCrypt has FIPS 140-2 validation with certificates #2425 and #3389. When trying to get software modules FIPS validated, this is often a costly and time-consuming effort and as such causes the FIPS validated modules to have high price tags.

Since the majority of wolfSSL products use the wolfCrypt encryption engine, this also means that if wolfSSH, wolfMQTT (with TLS support), wolfBoot, and other wolfSSL products are in place, they can be tested using FIPS validated code with their software before committing.

wolfSSL FIPS Ready can be downloaded from the wolfSSL download page, here: https://www.wolfssl.com/download/

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

It came to our attention that OpenSSL just published three new vulnerabilities.

ECDSA remote timing attack (CVE-2019-1547)
Fork Protection (CVE-2019-1549)
Padding Oracle in PKCS7_dataDecode and CMS_decrypt_set1_pkey (CVE-2019-1563)

These were implementation specific issues and do not affect wolfSSL. For a list of CVEs that apply to wolfSSL please watch the security page on our website here: https://www.wolfssl.com/docs/security-vulnerabilities/

We wanted to take this opportunity to remind our customers and users that wolfSSL is in no way related to OpenSSL. wolfSSL was written from the ground up and is a unique SSL/TLS implementation.

That being said, wolfSSL does support an OpenSSL compatibility layer allowing OpenSSL users to drop in wolfSSL but continue to use the most commonly found OpenSSL API’s after re-compiling their applications to link against wolfSSL.

One individual also pointed out the time delta between report and fix on the above CVEs and wolfSSL would like to remind our customers and users of how proud we are of our less than 48 hour delta between report and fix. For more on our response time and process regarding vulnerabilities check out https://www.wolfssl.com/everything-wanted-know-wolfssl-support-handles-vulnerability-reports-afraid-ask/

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

Since December 2016, wolfSSL has been collaborating with the “Revolutionary Internet of Things Operating System” (RIOT-OS) community to bring security to the embedded IoT devices supported by RIOT OS.

wolfSSL is pleased to announce that as of September 11, 2019 the pull request containing our port and examples has been merged into the RIOT master repository! We would like to extend our gratitude to the team at RIOT-OS who worked on this effort with wolfSSL engineers! https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/pull/10308 

The port contains the library modules for wolfCrypt and wolfSSL, and comes with examples that work on most 32-bit platforms supported by RIOT-OS. 

Building secure applications in RIOT-OS has never been this easy: just include the modules in your application makefile and start using wolfSSL right away!

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247. https://github.com/wolfssl/wolfssl or the support domain at https://wolfssl.zendesk.com.

wolfSSL’s embedded SSL/TLS library comes with support for many tools and libraries, one of which is curl! In addition to providing support and maintenance for curl, wolfSSL has also integrated the curl library in conjunction with Daniel Stenberg (an original author of curl and one of the founders). With this integration, wolfSSL now provides support and consulting for the curl library.

In addition, a modified version of the curl library, tiny-curl, is also available through wolfSSL. tiny-curl is a patch applied on top of curl to reduce its code size, which makes it favorable for embedded and real-time environments. Version 0.10 of tiny-curl is based on curl version 7.65.3, and is available for download from the wolfSSL download page: https://www.wolfssl.com/download/.

More information about wolfSSL and curl can be found on the curl product page: https://www.wolfssl.com/products/curl/. Details on wolfSSL support for curl and tiny-curl is also located on the support page here: https://www.wolfssl.com/products/support-packages/.

wolfSSL also provides support for the latest versions of the TLS protocol, including TLS 1.3! As such, wolfSSL is considering adding TLS 1.3 support to cURL in the future. More information about wolfSSL and TLS 1.3 can be found here: https://www.wolfssl.com/docs/tls13/.

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

The MQTT Sensor Network standard provides a lightweight networking protocol perfectly suited for low cost, low power hardware. The protocol allows using small topic identifiers in place of the full topic name when sending and receiving publish data.

The wolfMQTT SN Client implementation is based on the OASIS MQTT-SN v1.2 specification. The SN API is configured with the --enable-sn option. There is a separate API for the sensor network API, which all begin with the “SN_” prefix. The wolfMQTT SN Client operates over UDP, which is distinct from the wolfMQTT clients that use TCP. The following features are supported by the wolfMQTT SN Client:

• Register
• Will topic and message set up
• Will topic and message update
• All QoS levels
• Variable-sized packet length field

You can download the latest release of wolfMQTT from our website or clone the repository from GitHub.

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

With the recent release of wolfSSL 4.1.0, the wolfSSL team has also updated the wolfSSL FIPS Ready library. This product features new, state of the art concepts and technology. In a single sentence, wolfSSL FIPS Ready is a testable and free to download open source embedded SSL/TLS library with support for FIPS validation, with FIPS enabled cryptography layer code included in the wolfSSL source tree. To further elaborate on what FIPS Ready really means, you do not get a FIPS certificate and you are not FIPS approved. FIPS Ready means that you have included the FIPS code into your build and that you are operating according to the FIPS enforced best practices of default entry point, and Power On Self Test (POST).

FIPS validation is a government certification for cryptographic modules that states the module in question has undergone thorough and rigorous testing to be certified. FIPS validation specifies that a software/encryption module is able to be used within or alongside government systems. The most recent FIPS specification is 140-2, with various levels of security offered (1-5). Currently, wolfCrypt has FIPS 140-2 validation with certificates #2425 and #3389. When trying to get software modules FIPS validated, this is often a costly and time-consuming effort and as such causes the FIPS validated modules to have high price tags.

Since the majority of wolfSSL products use the wolfCrypt encryption engine, this also means that if wolfSSH, wolfMQTT (with TLS support), wolfBoot, and other wolfSSL products are in place, they can be tested using FIPS validated code with their software before committing.

wolfSSL FIPS Ready can be downloaded from the wolfSSL download page, here: https://www.wolfssl.com/download/

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

As many people know, the OpenSSL project is struggling with FIPS, and their new FIPS release is not expected until December 2020. The version of OpenSSL that supports FIPS goes into End Of Life and is no longer supported in December of 2019.

This means that OpenSSL users will not have a supported package for over a year. This is a big issue for companies that rely on security.

To fill this breach, wolfSSL has integrated our FIPS certified crypto module with OpenSSL as an OpenSSL engine. This means that:

1. OpenSSL users can get a supported FIPS solution, with packages available up to the 24×7 level,

2. The new wolfCrypt FIPS solution also supports the TLS 1.3 algorithms, so your package can support TLS 1.3,

3. You can support hardware encryption with your package, as the new wolfCrypt solution has full hardware encryption support.

Additionally, should you be using one of the OpenSSL derivatives like BoringSSL, we can also support you.

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

We love you.

Team wolfSSL

The MQTT Sensor Network standard provides a lightweight networking protocol perfectly suited for low cost, low power hardware. The protocol allows using small topic identifiers in place of the full topic name when sending and receiving publish data.

The wolfMQTT SN Client implementation is based on the OASIS MQTT-SN v1.2 specification. The SN API is configured with the --enable-sn option. There is a separate API for the sensor network API, which all begin with the “SN_” prefix. The wolfMQTT SN Client operates over UDP, which is distinct from the wolfMQTT clients that use TCP. The following features are supported by the wolfMQTT SN Client:

• Register
• Will topic and message set up
• Will topic and message update
• All QoS levels
• Variable-sized packet length field

You can download the latest release of wolfMQTT from our website or clone the repository from GitHub.

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