RECENT BLOG NEWS

A new year, another attack on TLS.  Karthikeyan Bhargavan and Gaetan Leurent of INRIA recently announced the new attack.  TLS 1.2 allows negotiation of the hashing algorithm used for signatures, typically to “upgrade” the hash to a higher security level.  Before TLS 1.2 a combination of MD5 and SHA1 were used for signatures. TLS 1.2 allows SHA1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512, but also MD5 to be chosen for signatures.  Fortunately for users of the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library
we’ve never supported MD5 based signatures in TLS 1.2.

To be clear, wolfSSL is not vulnerable to key strength loss because it does not allow MD5 based signatures for the server or client.  Several implementations are affected by the attack: http://www.mitls.org/pages/attacks/SLOTH .  

For any questions about TLS security in wolfSSL contact us at facts@wolfssl.com

Everybody with a pulse is excited about the IoT, for all of the right reasons, but the market is starting to recognize the challenges of security. See the following EE Times article by John Curran of Accenture for a description of the security challenges of IoT: https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1328584.

Fortunately, wolfSSL is here to help secure your IoT designs. We currently have staff at CES, so let us know if you would like to get together at the show by emailing us at facts@wolfssl.com.

Securing connected devices, including the IoT, is very important to us at wolfSSL. Larry Stefonic, CEO and Co-Founder of wolfSSL, recently published a guest post on the Xively blog that talks about the fundamentals of device security.

This post includes commentary on securing the connection, device authentication, secure firmware updates, and securing the data on the device. To read the article in full, visit the link below:

https://blog.xively.com/guest-blog-iot-security-start-with-the-fundamentals-2/
(as of 05/01/2018, this link no longer works – this may be attributed to Google’s purchase of Xively)

If you have any questions about using the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library or wolfCrypt cryptography engine to secure your IoT device, you can contact us at facts@wolfssl.com

Curious about new features and additions to wolfSSL technologies for the coming year?

Some items on our current roadmap include:
– Early TLS 1.3 adoption
– Non-blocking Crypto support
– DTLS robustness improvements
– Curve25519 / Ed25519 integration at the TLS level
– Increased IoT platforms
– More resource reduction options

In terms of new environments we’ll have:
– More FIPS platforms
– Additional hardware acceleration options
– Easier integration with event programming
– Data plane development support

More Open Source project plugins including:
– HAProxy
– OpenSSH
– nginx

New product offerings will include:
– wolfSSH
– wolfSFUS (secure firmware update system)
– wolfCrypt as a separate library
– wolfCLU (command line utility)
– wolfMQTT enhancements

We also anticipate offering our testing and security audit programs as services. Keep an eye out for connected home white papers and case studies.

Something we missed, or something you would like to see on our roadmap? Please let us know.

wolfSSL has a port to devkitPro, giving an option to game developers to secure information with the embedded, lightweight, wolfSSL TLS/SSL library. The low memory footprint size of wolfSSL allows for efficient use of security while leaving plenty of room for the game itself. The low memory size of wolfSSL is something that has been perfected in the IoT realm and those benefits that are seen in IoT transfer nicely into the game development realm. We have updated and verified the port to devkitPPC with the most recent release of wolfSSL.

For more information, or an example of use, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com.

wolfSSL version 3.8.0 has been released and is now available for download. The release has many new feature additions and some minor fixes. One of the new feature additions is that there have been APIs added for single shot hashing, creating a signature, and verifying a signature. This allows users to easily create a hash or signature for single time use by just calling one API. Cutting out the time needed to manage structs for the algorithms used in the process. Another feature added is a C# wrapper to allow using the wolfSSL embedded TLS/SSL library when working with C#.

A couple of the fixes in release 3.8.0 were for IDEA on 16 and 32-bit systems along with a fix for LowResTimer on Microchip ports. No high level security fixes were needed with this release but we always recommend updating to the latest release version.

The full list of changes in this release, taken from the README are listed below:

– Example client/server with VxWorks
– AES-NI use with AES-GCM
– stunnel compatibility enhancements
– Single shot hash and signature/verify API added
– Update Cavium NITROX port
– LPCXpresso IDE support added
– C# wrapper to support wolfSSL use by a C# program
– (BETA version)OCSP stapling added
– Update OpenSSH compatibility
– Improve DTLS handshake when retransmitting finished message
– fix idea_mult() for 16 and 32bit systems
– fix LowResTimer on Microchip ports

For more information about wolfSSL contact us at facts@wolfssl.com.

wolfSSL Inc, embedded SSL/TLS and cryptography provider for the IoT, has partnered with Renesas Electronics, a global leader of semiconductor manufacture. Through the support for their high performance microprocessor series of RX and RZ, wolfSSL delivers secure connections of IoT solution with a lightweight high throughput secure communication library.

Renesas Website
wolfSSL Embedded SSL/TLS Library

PSK cipher suites are a superb choice in low resource environments where both ends of the connection can be controlled. With PSK, each side of the connection has an already agreed upon key to use rather than agreeing on one during the TLS handshake. This reduces resource consumption for each session using PSK.

For example, on one of wolfSSL’s test machines the cipher suite DHE-PSK-AES128-CBC-SHA256 has an average connection time of 3.498 milliseconds with a peak byte usage of 6,335. On the same machine a similar cipher suite DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256, not using PSK, has an average connection time of 7.146 milliseconds and peak byte usage of 19,431. wolfSSL always recommends using ephemeral keys (DHE or ECDHE) to maintain forward secrecy but in an ultra limited resource environment, memory and speed can be further improved by using a static PSK cipher suite such as PSK-AES128-CBC-SHA.

In addition to RAM reduction, using PSK can reduce the library footprint size as well. One of the smallest wolfSSL builds to date has been the LeanPSK build, which comes in at around 21kB.  For comparison, a typical build on an embedded, optimized compiler will be 60-100kB.

For information regarding the use of PSK cipher suites or general inquiries about wolfSSL’s embedded SSL/TLS library, please contact us at facts@wolfssl.com.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLS-PSK

Version 1.3.0 of wolfSSL JNI is now available for download. wolfSSL JNI provides Java applications with a convenient Java API to the widely-used wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library, including support for TLS 1.2 and DTLS 1.2.

Release 1.3.0 has bug fixes and new features including:

– Updated support to wolfSSL 3.7.0
– Added finalizers for WolfSSLContext and WolfSSLSession classes
– Fix for SSLv3 now disabled by default in wolfSSL proper
– SSLv3 now marked as @Deprecated
– PSK (pre-shared key) support for client and server
– Better error checking and exception handling
– New WolfSSLJNIException class
– WolfSSLSession now cached in native WOLFSSL struct for callbacks
– Easier inclusion of junit4 in build.xml

wolfSSL JNI 1.3.0 can be downloaded from the wolfSSL download page and the wolfSSL JNI Manual can be found here.

wolfSSL has a new feature to allow for users to plug in their own crypto for RSA if they so choose. This is a great feature for students looking to test their own RSA operations in a SSL/TLS connection or for those wanting to see if they can speed up operations in the IoT realm and on embedded devices. This option can be used with the build flag “–with-user-crypto”. An example of building a module can be found in the directory “wolfssl_root/wolfcrypt/user-crypto/” and built with the commands:

cd wolfcrypt/user-crypto/
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

This example makes use of Intel’s IPP libraries and needs them installed and existing on the system before being able to build. For any questions on use, or about the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library in general, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com

Intel IPP libraries https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-ipp .