RECENT BLOG NEWS

As you may know, wolfSSL includes support for offloading cryptography operations into NXP Coldfire and Kinetis devices that include the CAU, mmCAU, or LTC hardware crypto modules. Taking advantage of these modules improves performance of both the cryptography and the SSL/TLS layer running on top of it.

Here is a quick comparison of performance between software cryptography and the hardware-based cryptography offered by the Kinetis mmCAU on a K60 TWR running at 100MHz:

Software Crypto Hardware Crypto

AES 0.49 MB/s 2.71 MB/s
DES 0.31 MB/s 3.49 MB/s
3DES 0.12 MB/s 1.74 MB/s
MD5 4.07 MB/s 4.88 MB/s
SHA-1 1.74 MB/s 2.71 MB/s
SHA-256 1.16 MB/s 2.22 MB/s
HMAC-SHA 1.74 MB/s 3.05 MB/s
HMAC-SHA256 1.22 MB/s 2.03 MB/s

And, here are some benchmark comparisons between software and hardware cryptography offered by the LTC module on a NXP FRDM-K82F, Cortex M4 running at 150 MHz:

Software Crypto Hardware Crypto

RNG 0.136 MB/s 0.939 MB/s
AES enc 0.247 MB/s 12.207 MB/s
AES dec 0.239 MB/s 12.207 MB/s
AES-GCM 0.016 MB/s 12.207 MB/s
AES-CTR 0.247 MB/s 8.138 MB/s
AES-CCM 0.121 MB/s 6.104 MB/s
CHACHA 0.568 MB/s 3.052 MB/s
CHA-POLY 0.444 MB/s 1.878 MB/s
POLY1305 2.441 MB/s 8.138 MB/s
SHA 0.842 MB/s 4.069 MB/s
SHA-256 0.309 MB/s 2.713 MB/s
SHA-384 0.224 MB/s 0.763 MB/s
SHA-512 0.216 MB/s 0.698 MB/s
RSA 2048 public 147.000 ms 12.000 ms (over 1 iteration)
RSA 2048 private 2363.000 ms 135.000 ms (over 1 iteration
ECC 256 key generation 355.400 ms 17.400 ms (over 5 iterations)
EC-DHE key agreement 352.400 ms 15.200 ms (over 5 iterations)
EC-DSA sign time 362.400 ms 20.200 ms (over 5 iterations)
EC-DSA verify time 703.400 ms 33.000 ms (over 5 iterations)
CURVE25519 256 key generation 66.200 ms 14.400 ms (over 5 iterations)
CURVE25519 key agreement 65.400 ms 14.400 ms (over 5 iterations)
ED25519 key generation 25.000 ms 14.800 ms (over 5 iterations)
ED25519 sign time 30.400 ms 16.800 ms (over 5 iterations)
ED25519 verify time 74.400 ms 30.400 ms (over 5 iterations)

Did you know that wolfSSL also now supports TLS 1.3? With TLS 1.3, users also have the ability to use this new protocol version for even better performance for TLS connections!

TLS 1.3 includes several improvements over TLS 1.2, including reducing the number of round trips required to perform a full handshake, and repurposing the ticketing system to allow for servers to be stateless. These changes mean better performance on Freescale/NXP CAU, mmCAU, and LTC-based devices, and lower memory usage on those devices acting as a TLS server.

To learn more about using TLS 1.3 in wolfSSL, visit our TLS 1.3 webpage today!

As you may know, wolfSSL includes support for offloading cryptography operations into the PIC32MZ hardware crypto module.  This improves performance of both the cryptography and the SSL/TLS layer running on top of it.

Here is a quick comparison of performance between software cryptography and the hardware-based cryptography offered by the PIC32MZ:

           Software Crypto     Hardware Crypto

AES-CBC    0.26 Mb/s           5.78 Mb/s

AES-CTR    0.69 Mb/s           5.67 Mb/s

3DES       6.19 Mb/s           6.19 Mb/s

MD5        6.22 Mb/s           16.84 Mb/s

SHA-1      3.46 Mb/s           16.65 Mb/s

SHA-256    1.678 Mb/s          15.84 Mb/s

Did you know that wolfSSL also now supports TLS 1.3?  With TLS 1.3, users also have the ability to use this new protocol version for even better performance for TLS connections!

TLS 1.3 includes several improvements over TLS 1.2, including reducing the number of round trips required to perform a full handshake, and repurposing the ticketing system to allow for servers to be stateless.  These changes mean better performance on PIC32-based devices, and lower memory usage on those PIC32 devices acting as a TLS server.

To learn more about using TLS 1.3 in wolfSSL, visit our TLS 1.3 webpage today!

Hi!  Are you a user of Arch Linux?  wolfSSL 3.12.0 is now available as a package in the Arch User Repository!

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/wolfssl

wolfSSL, written in C, supports industry protocol standards up to TLS 1.3 and DTLS 1.2 and progressive ciphers including ChaCha20, Poly1305, Curve25519, Ed25519, and SHA-3.  We encourage you to give our package a try and let us know what you think!

For help getting started with wolfSSL and wolfCrypt, see:

wolfSSL Manual

wolfSSL API Reference

wolfCrypt API Reference

wolfSSL Quickstart Guide

SSL/TLS Tutorial

wolfSSL supports use with Intel® SGX on both Windows and Linux. In addition to being available on both operating systems the Linux example includes running a full TLS connection in a secure Enclave. Examples can be found on GitHub under wolfssl/wolfssl-examples located here (https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl-examples). One of the exciting upcoming features this year, is that wolfSSL is planning to be FIPS certified while running inside a secure Enclave.

If there are questions about current support or the future roadmap feel free to let us know at facts@wolfssl.com.

Do you need a FIPS 140-2 validated cryptography library for your ARM-based platform? wolfCrypt has been FIPS 140-2 validated on several different operating environments to date, some of which have been on resource-constrained ARM-based devices.

FIPS validating a crypto library on a resource-constrained device can be more involved than doing a validation on a standard desktop-like platform. Variances in OS, Flash/RAM, filesystem (or lack of), entropy, communication, and more can make things interesting. Going through our past ARM-based validations, we have figured out how to make this process easier with wolfCrypt!

If you are interested in exploring FIPS 140-2 cryptography validations on ARM platforms, reach out to us at facts@wolfssl.com!

Greetings! In this post we are covering Operational Environment’s (OE’s) we worked with this past year. These OE’s were validated under an OEM relationship where the company validating is licensed to resell the wolfCrypt FIPS product under their own brand name.

wolfSSL was particularly excited about both of these projects as they display the great range of capabilities for wolfSSL and the wolfCrypt FIPS module.

The first OE was an embedded system with Cortex M4 processor and the second was a backend server where the wolfSSL product scales nicely due to reduced run-time resource use!

wolfSSL is happy to assist with OEM FIPS validation and rebranding if the situation fits! We would love to hear from you, contact us anytime: fips@wolfssl.com

If you missed the first part in our series, you can read it here!

wolfSSL 3.12.0 is now available for download! This release contains bug fixes, new features, and includes fixes for one security vulnerability (low level).

The one low level vulnerability fix included in this release is in relation to a potential DoS attack on a wolfSSL client. Previously a client would accept many warning alert messages without a limit. This fix puts a limit to the number of warning alert messages received and if this limit is reached a fatal error ALERT_COUNT_E is returned. The max number of warning alerts by default is set to 5 and can be adjusted with the macro WOLFSSL_ALERT_COUNT_MAX. Thanks for the report from Tarun Yadav and Koustav Sadhukhan from Defence Research and Development Organization, INDIA.

Continue reading below for a summary of the features and fixes included in this release.

TLS 1.3 Support!

If you follow wolfSSL’s blog, you may have heard discussion about our TLS 1.3 BETA support. wolfSSL 3.12.0 is the first stable release that contains our TLS 1.3 support (client and server side)! This means that you can pair TLS 1.3 with your favorite other features and project ports too! TLS 1.3 with Nginx! TLS 1.3 with ARMv8! and TLS 1.3 with Async Crypto!

Enable TLS 1.3 draft 20 support using the “–enable-tls13” configure option, or the older draft 18 support with the “–enable-tls13-draft18” option. wolfSSL also supports 0RTT with TLS 1.3, which can be enabled with “–enable-earlydata”.

For more information about using wolfSSL with TLS 1.3, visit our TLS 1.3 webpage, or contact us at support@wolfssl.com.

Build and Configure Option Changes

– Added enable all feature (–enable-all)
– Added trackmemory feature (–enable-trackmemory)
– Fixes for compiling wolfSSL with GCC version 7, most dealing with switch statement fall through warnings.
– Added warning when compiling without hardened math operations

Intel Assembly Improvements, Intel SGX Linux Support, and Intel QuickAssist Support

For users of wolfSSL on Intel platforms, we have made improvements including:

– A port of wolfSSL for Intel SGX with Linux. We previously only supported Intel SGX with Windows.
– AVX and AVX2 assembly instructions for improved ChaCha20 performance
– Intel QAT fixes for when using –disable-fastmath
– Improvements and enhancements to Intel QuickAssist support

Note: There is a known issue with using ChaCha20 AVX assembly on versions of GCC earlier than 5.2. This is encountered with using the wolfSSL enable options “–enable-intelasm” and “–enable-chacha”. To avoid this issue ChaCha20 can be enabled with “–enable-chacha=noasm”.

If using “–enable-intelasm” and also using “–enable-sha224” or “–enable-sha256” there is a known issue with trying to use “-fsanitize=address”.

Official SHA-3 Support (Keccak)

Previously wolfSSL only supported the SHA-3 runner-up Blake2b. wolfSSL now additionally supports the final SHA-3 winner, Keccak. This can be enabled with the “–enable-sha3” configure option. It is enabled by default on x86_64 platforms.

DTLS Multicast and Updates

For our DTLS users, wolfSSL now supports DTLS Multicast with “–enable-mcast”! In addition, this release also contains:

– An update to how DTLS handles decryption and MAC failures
– An update to the DTLS session export version number for use with the “–enable-sessionexport” option

For more details about DTLS Multicast, get in touch with us at facts@wolfssl.com!

New and Updated Hardware Ports

With this release, we have update several of our hardware ports and added a few new ones as well, including:

– Update and fix for our Microchip PIC32MZ port
– Fix for STM32F4 AES-GCM
– Addition of a Xilinx port, based on the UltraZed-EG Starter Kit based on the Xilinx Zynq® UltraScale+™ MPSoC
– Addition of SHA-224 and AES key wrap to ARMv8 port
– Additional input argument sanity checks to ARMv8 assembly port

Enhanced Testing

– Additional unit testing for MD5, SHA, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512, RipeMd, HMAC, 3DES, IDEA, ChaCha20, ChaCha20Poly1305 AEAD, Camellia, Rabbit, ARC4, AES, RSA, HC-128

Updated Operating System Ports

– Update TI-RTOS port for dependency on new wolfSSL source files
– Update MQX Classic and mmCAU ports
– Fix ThreadX/NetX warning

wolfSSL Python Wrapper

– Expand wolfSSL Python wrapper to now include a client side implementation

wolfSSL Python Wrapper Documentation
wolfCrypt Python Wrapper Documentation

Other Additions and Modifications

Other changes that this release contains includes:

– Fix for making PKCS12 dynamic types match
– Fixes for potential memory leaks when using –enable-fast-rsa
– Fix for when using custom ECC curves and add BRAINPOOLP256R1 test
– Fix for Async crypto with GCC 7.1 and HMAC when not using Intel QuickAssist
– Added more sanity checks to fp_read_unsigned_bin function
– Fix for potential buffer over read with wolfSSL_CertPemToDer
– Add PKCS7/CMS decode support for KARI with IssuerAndSerialNumber
– Added RSA PSS sign and verify
– Fixes for AES key wrap and PKCS7 on Windows VS
– Support use of staticmemory with PKCS7
– Fix for Blake2b build with GCC 5.4
– Fixes for OCSP and CRL non blocking sockets and for incomplete cert chain with OCSP

Updated Examples

– Adjust example servers to not treat a peer closed error as a hard error
– Added benchmark block size argument

If you have any questions about the new release, or using wolfSSL in your project, please contact us at facts@wolfssl.com

libFuzzer, a fuzzing engine created by LLVM, is now being used to test the wolfSSL library. Below is a short description of libFuzzer, taken from LLVM’s website here.

LibFuzzer is linked with the library under test, and feeds fuzzed inputs to the library via a specific fuzzing entrypoint (aka “target function”); the fuzzer then tracks which areas of the code are reached, and generates mutations on the corpus of input data in order to maximize the code coverage. The code coverage information for libFuzzer is provided by LLVM’s SanitizerCoverage instrumentation.

With this tool, wolfSSL API are being tested on how well they can handle random gibberish, poorly formatted certificates, and other forms of data that are created and input by the user. These tests are being used to detect buffer-overflow bugs, segmentation faults, memory leaks, undefined behaviors, and many other bugs that could potentially be used to exploit the wolfSSL library.

If you are interested in further details of how wolfSSL is using libFuzzer, email us at facts@wolfssl.com.

wolfSSL is pleased to bring our community a report of the past years FIPS activities. In part one of this three-part series we will cover the new Operating Environments (OEs) added to the wolfSSL certificate in the past year + CAVP algorithm testing done by wolfSSL.

Part two of this series will cover OEs tested by wolfSSL for OEM partners.

Part Three of this series will cover on-site consulting services offered by wolfSSL and some of the commentary from our on-site consulting engineers.

This past year wolfSSL added the following OEs to the wolfCrypt certificate on 06/23/2016

wolfSSL also performed algorithm testing or CAVP only validation for AES in these OEs:

The following AES modes of operation were tested: ECB, CBC, CMAC, GMAC, and GCM. The algo certificates can be visited via the following links.
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cavp/documents/aes/aesval.html#4452 (3/31/2017)
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cavp/documents/aes/aesval.html#4027 (7/31/2016)

wolfSSL also performed algorithm testing or CAVP only validation for SHA-256 on the Same OEs.
Those certificates can be found via the following links.
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cavp/documents/shs/shaval.html#3665 (3/31/2017)
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cavp/documents/shs/shaval.html#3320 (7/31/2016)

wolfSSL offers several FIPS services including but not limited to: OEM revalidations, on-site consulting for receiving your own FIPS validation, or just a traditional FIPS validation for your operating environment. For more info please contact fips@wolfssl.com and we will be happy to discuss details with you!

As we’ve mentioned in a previous blog post one of the key advantages of TLS 1.3 is the reduction in round-trips.  Older versions of the TLS protocol require two complete round-trips before the client sends the application data.  With TLS v1.3 only 1 round-trip is required!  This means network latency has less impact on the time required to establish a secure connection.  We recently completed a handshake benchmark with various latencies to make sure wolfSSL is taking advantage of the reduced latency in TLS 1.3.

For more details on using TLS v1.3 with wolfSSL, please contact us at facts@wolfssl.com