RECENT BLOG NEWS

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is currently underway in San Francisco, CA this week. One of the conference topics, also mentioned in the Keynote, is the Swift programming language.

Swift, introduced roughly two years ago, is a programming language for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS that is gaining popularity with developers. This year at WWDC, several announcements were made including the introduction of the Swift Playgrounds app for iPad.

We would like to ask our user base if there is any interest in a Swift wrapper for the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library. wolfSSL currently has language wrappers for Java, C#, and Python, and is generally portable across devices and operating systems. Are you interested in using wolfSSL from Swift? If so, let us know at facts@wolfssl.com!

WWDC16
Swift Programming Language (Apple)

We were recently reading about PikeOS and ElinOS, embedded operating systems from SYSGO AG and were curious if any wolfSSL users are interested in the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library and wolfCrypt cryptography libraries running on these operating systems.  If you aren’t familiar with these operating systems, here’s a quick summary via Wikipedia:

PikeOS:

“PikeOS is a microkernel-based real-time operating system made by SYSGO AG. It is targeted at safety and security critical embedded systems. It provides a partitioned environment for multiple operating systems with different design goals, safety requirements, or security requirements to coexist in a single machine.”

ElinOS:

“ELinOS is a commercial development environment for embedded Linux. It consists of a Linux distribution for the target embedded system and development tools for a development host computer. ELinOS provides embedded Linux as a standalone operating system or it can be integrated into the PikeOS virtualization platform if safety and security demands cannot be met by Linux alone.”

If you are interested in seeing support in wolfSSL for these OS’s, let us know at facts@wolfssl.com!

We are pleased to inform that wolfCrypt has a new wrapper!

The wolfCrypt Python Wrapper allows use of the wolfCrypt embedded crypto library in a Python project. This will let users take advantage of the low footprint size of wolfCrypt in IoT projects that use the Python language.

Check out the wolfCrypt Documentation (https://wolfssl.github.io/wolfcrypt-py) and try it out.

For more info about using wolfCrypt with Python, or the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com.

wolfSSL has added support for embOS in the wolfCrypt embedded cryptography library. We have example projects in the “/IDE/IAR-EWARM/embOS/” directory which include a library to link against, a benchmark, and wolfcrypt_test that are preconfigured for Atmel’s SAMV71 Xplained Ultra when using IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM (EWARM). These examples are set up to build and run with no user modifications by default (After you download the documented software and have on hand the necessary hardware).

The examples will be available in the next stable release of the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library and are currently available in the wolfSSL development branch at: https://github.com/wolfssl/wolfssl

There is a README_custom_port that will assist in creating a project that targets a different MPU as well. As always we are more than willing to help anyone get setup and going so please feel free to contact us support@wolfssl.com if you ever have any questions!

When using wolfSSL with MYSQL the portability and robustness refined in the IoT realm meets databases. The patch has been updated to MYSQL version 5.6.30 and allows for easy replacement of the bundled TLS/SSL library to a recent version of wolfSSL. Using the patch leverages the progressive, lightweight wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library when securing database connections. The patch, along with instructions on how to apply it, can be found on github at this repository https://github.com/wolfSSL/mysql-patch.

For more information contact wolfSSL at facts@wolfssl.com

Are you interested in seeding wolfSSL with quantum entropy?  wolfSSL has recently partnered with Whitewood Encryption Systems to bring support for the Whitewood netRandom client library to wolfSSL.

Whitewood netRandom is a client/server solution for delivery true random numbers.  The netRandom server includes the Whitewood Entropy Engine – a hardware-based high-performance, quantum random number generator.  A netRandom client securely connects to this server to retrieve quantum entropy.  This is beneficial in environments where it is tough or impossible to locally generate good random numbers.  Since the security of a cryptosystem is dependent on true random numbers, this is very important for users of wolfSSL and wolfCrypt.

When wolfSSL is compiled with support for the netRandom client library API, wolfSSL’s PRNG will be seeded with quantum random numbers from the netRandom server.  Users can compile wolfSSL with netRandom support by using the following ./configure option or by defining HAVE_WNR when compiling wolfSSL:

–with-wnr=PATH      Path to Whitewood netRandom install (default /usr/local)

netRandom support adds the following two functions to the wolfSSL API, through the header:

int wc_InitNetRandom(const char* configFile, wnr_hmac_key hmac_cb, int timeout);
int wc_FreeNetRandom(void);

An application should call wc_InitNetRandom() once during startup, passing it the netRandom configuration file, optional HMAC callback, and entropy timeout.  wc_FreeNetRandom() should be called upon application shutdown to free the netRandom context.

Usage examples can be found in the wolfSSL example applications, located in under the “./examples” directory of the wolfSSL download.  netRandom support is currently available in the development branch of wolfSSL and will be incorporated into the next stable release as well.

For more information about using the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library with the Whitewood netRandom client library, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com.

References:
Whitewood Encryption Systems
Whitewood netRandom

OpenSSL released a security advisory on May 3rd 2016: https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv/20160503.txt. Some wolfSSL embedded TLS users are probably wondering if similar security fixes are needed in wolfSSL.  The answer to that is no.  Specifically, CVE-2016-2107 and CVE-2016-2108 are OpenSSL implementation bugs.  Since wolfSSL and CyaSSL embedded SSL libraries have a completely different code base from OpenSSL we do not share these defects.

Please contact wolfSSL by email at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at 425 245 8247 if you have any security related questions.

wolfSSL is happy to announce that the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS and wolfCrypt cryptography libraries have been ported to the uTasker operating system!

uTasker is an operating system, stack, and collection of services designed for embedded devices.  It includes an OS, filesystem, device drivers, and TCP/IP stack among other features.  The uTasker package includes a device simulator, allowing developers to test and debug code faster than would be possible on physical hardware itself.  Complete details on the uTasker stack can be found on the project website: http://www.utasker.com/.

wolfSSL has added a new preprocessor define to enable the uTasker port layer called WOLFSSL_UTASKER.  The port currently includes example client and server uTasker tasks which make use of the wolfSSL I/O abstraction layer to send and receive data over a secure SSL/TLS connection using uTasker RAW sockets.  The example tasks have been tested using the uTasker device simulator contained in the “uTasker_M522XX_V1.4-6” distribution.

What this means for projects using uTasker is that network connections can now communicate securely over SSL/TLS, using the progressive and lightweight wolfSSL SSL/TLS library.  Applications can also take advantage of the underlying wolfCrypt cryptography library to access crypto operations directly (block ciphers, stream ciphers, AEAD ciphers, hash functions, public key algorithms, and certificate verification routines).

The wolfSSL uTasker example client and server task are located in the ‘wolfssl-examples’ GitHub repository, linked below.  Documentation for these examples and on using wolfSSL with uTasker can be found on the wolfSSL website:

Using wolfSSL with uTasker
wolfSSL uTasker Examples

If you are interested in using wolfSSL on a uTasker-based project, feel free to reach out to us at facts@wolfssl.com with any questions.

wolfSSL has a new C# wrapper, allowing use of the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library in a C# project. This will let users take advantage of the low footprint size of wolfSSL in IoT spaces that use the .NET framework. A Visual Studio project, along with server examples can be found in the directory “/wrapper/CSharp/”.

The wolfSSL C# wrapper is included in versions of wolfSSL beginning with 3.8.0. To download wolfSSL, visit the download page. More information about the wrapper and documentation can be found at the following links:

wolfSSL C# Wrapper
wolfSSL C# Manual
wolfSSL C# API Reference

For more info about using C# with wolfSSL, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com.

The wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library has added the option for using ECDHE-PSK cipher suites. This opens up using the small memory size ECC keys with PSK on embedded devices.

PSK (pre shared keys) is a viable option when controlling both ends of the connection. It allows for saving memory and computation time when performing a TLS handshake. Adding ECDHE gives the cipher suite perfect forward secrecy with using an ephemeral ECC key during the TLS handshake. Previously wolfSSL had DHE-PSK cipher suites but using ECDHE-PSK cipher suites will save even more memory, beneficial in resource-constrained, IoT devices.

The ECDHE-PSK cipher suites available to users include:

ECDHE-PSK-NULL-SHA256
ECDHE-PSK-AES128-CBC-SHA256
ECDHE-PSK-CHACHA20-POLY1305