RECENT BLOG NEWS

yaSSL believes that business and technology partnerships are one of the keys to fostering success.  Such partnerships can come in many forms – be that business, technical, or community based, and work for both open source or commercial solutions.  To date, we have partnered with several companies, and are always looking for new partnerships.  To see a list of our current partners, please visit our Partner Page (http://yassl.com/yaSSL/Partners.html).

Are you interested in becoming a partner with yaSSL?  If so, contact us at info@yassl.com for more information.

Hi!  This top ten list crossed our desk today and we thought it was worthwhile to share with our users.  Combating MITM attacks and properly implementing SSL/TLS are on the list again this year.  

https://www.darkreading.com/top-mobile-vulnerabilities-and-exploits-of-2012/d/d-id/1138833

wolfSSL provides a mechanism to plug in your own application specific I/O routines. By default, the library uses functions that call the system’s recv() and send() functions with a file descriptor cached with the function wolfSSL_set_fd().

The prototypes for the I/O routines are:

int CBIORecv(CYASSL* ssl, char* buf, int sz, void* ctx);
int CBIOSend(CYASSL* ssl, char* buf, int sz, void* ctx);

In the default case, the network socket’s file descriptor is passed to the I/O routine in the ctx parameter. The ssl parameter is a pointer to the current session. In the receive case, buf points to the buffer where incoming cipher text should be copied for wolfSSL to decrypt and sz is the size of the buffer. In the send case, buf points to the buffer where wolfSSL has written cipher text to be sent and sz is the size of that buffer.

First you need to register your I/O callbacks with the CYASSL_CTX for your application using the functions wolfSSL_SetIORecv() and wolfSSL_SetIOSend().

wolfSSL_SetIORecv(ctx, myCBIORecv);
wolfSSL_SetIOSend(ctx, myCBIOSend);

As an example, for your application you want to control the socket for your own purposes. An example would be to have a server with a datagram socket which receives data from multiple clients or processes TLS through STDIN and STDOUT. In this case you would have four buffers:

cipher-receive encrypted data received from peer
cipher-send encrypted data to send to peer
clear-receive clear data received from wolfSSL
clear-send clear data passed to wolfSSL

Pointers to these buffers, values for their sizes, and read and write positions should be placed into a structure. This structure should be saved to the wolfSSL session with the functions wolfSSL_SetIOReadCtx() and wolfSSL_SetIOWriteCtx().

wolfSSL_SetIOReadCtx(ssl, buffer_data);
wolfSSL_SetIOWriteCtx(ssl, buffer_data);

The application receives a block of cipher text into the buffer cipher-receive. Next the application would call wolfSSL_read(ssl, buffer_data->clear_receive), causing wolfSSL to call myCBIORecv(). myCBIORecv() will be given a buffer, the size of the buffer, and the ctx, which has the cipher-receive buffer. The callback may be called many times for one call to wolfSSL_read(). If the cipher-receive buffer is empty, the callback should return -2, otherwise it should return the number of bytes copied into buf.

When the library wants to send data, like during handshaking or when wolfSSL_send() is called with some clear text, the library will call myCBIOSend(). The callback is given a buffer full of encrypted data, and the length of the encrypted data. In this example, the callback would copy this cipher text into cipher-send and return the number of bytes copied. If the cipher-send buffer isn’t big enough, the callback should return -2.

Choosing a good hash function for a hash table is difficult to say the least.  Even if you can achieve good distribution and performance for a given hash function it`s still most likely dependent on table size and the type of input.  Resizing the table or getting unexpected input can quickly turn an otherwise good choice into a bad one.  Using a cryptographic hash function reduces nearly all of the problems.  Any and all table sizes are now equally supported.  Strings, numbers, and even binary data are all valid input.  And since a change in a single bit of input has an avalanche effect on the output, uniform distribution is achieved.  Really, the only possible negative is performance.  But it`s not nearly as bad as you probably think.  

We tested 100 bytes of random data and did the test 1,000,000 times using the hash functions MD5, SHA1, and a typical MULTIPLIER type hash function.  Of course the basic hash function was the fastest at 0.66 microseconds per hash.  MD5 used 0.78 microseconds per hash while SHA1 consumed 1.02 microseconds per hash.  All in all, the small hit in performance seems well worth the gains in being able to use variable table sizes and any type of input without concern.  Testing was done using wolfSSL`s cryptography functionality in the CTaoCrypt module.

Are you interested in using the wolfSSL lightweight SSL library on the Green Hills INTEGRITY RTOS? Although wolfSSL doesn’t currently have INTEGRITY support, we would like to gauge user and community interest to help us plan our schedule for the upcoming year. If you would like to see INTEGRITY support added to wolfSSL, please let us know at info@yassl.com.

From Wikipedia, INTEGRITY “is royalty-free, POSIX-certified, and intended for use in embedded systems needing reliability, availability, and fault tolerance. It is built atop the velOSity microkernel and is intended mainly for modern 32- or 64-bit embedded system designs that support an MMU.” To learn more about INTEGRITY, please visit the Green Hills website, here: http://www.ghs.com/products/rtos/integrity.html.

Business and Company Progress

• We doubled our customer base again this year and dramatically increased revenues, confirming the usefulness of our technology, our open source strategy, and our relevance in the emerging device security and BYOD markets.
• We have further penetrated key vertical markets, including home appliances, smart metering, sensors, M2M, gaming, VoIP, banking, and defense/military.   
• We expanded our partnerships with Synopsys, Freescale, Mentor Graphics, Intel, Microchip, ARM, Marvell, FreeRTOS, EBS Net, Cavium, and STMicroelectronicselectronics.
• We successfully participated in the following events:  CES, FOSDEM, Design West, OSCON, RSA, Black Hat, Game Developer Conference, Design East, Infosec UK, Intel Developer Forum, Intel Alliance Summit, and ARM TechCon.
• We increased the size of our team, and continue to hire top notch engineering talent.
• We continue to value and support the open source community through our free support offering for open source users.
• We released two new case studies surrounding M2M communication (Cinterion, CCww) and a new white paper with Intel about AES-NI.
• We gave presentations at FOSDEM 2012 (Technical Update), the Kerberos Consortium during RSA (Kerberos/GSS-API Android), DESIGN West (Nucleus Support), Infosecurity UK (What to look for in a SSL/TLS library), and the MySQL Meetup in Seattle (yaSSL in MySQL).
• yaSSL introduced a Japanese version of www.yassl.com to better cater to our Japanese users and customers.
• We introduced a new three-tiered support program.

wolfSSL Technical Progress

• AES-GCM – Direct AES Galois Counter Mode support and cipher suites
• CRL – Certificate Revocation List processing with directory monitoring
• OCSP – Online Certificate Status Protocol support built in
• Lean PSK  – A low footprint, 24k, PSK TLSv1.2 build
• Reduced Memory use after handshake – Once the TLS handshake is complete, handshake resources are freed
• Lower stack memory use – Use of large static buffers eliminated
• Reliable DTLS, Cookies – DTLS cookies and full reliability now supported, no longer beta
• Unit/Suite Tests – Exposed unit API, hash, and cipher suite tests with valgrind support
• Static ECDH – Now supports several static ECDH cipher suites
• ECC client cert – Authentication with client ECC certificates now supported
• ECC released into open source – Now available on github and downloads
• SHA-384 – Direct use and cipher suites supported
• Subject AltName processing – AltNames easily retrieved from peer certificate for verification
• Sniffer SessionTicket support – Support for modern browsers using session tickets
• Command line example options – Example client and server now have several runtime options

wolfSSL Porting Progress

• FreeRTOS and FreeRTOS Windows Simulator
• SafeRTOS
• Freescale MQX/RTCS/MFS.  wolfSSL is now ported to MQX and has been tested on the Kinetis MCU.  Example CodeWarrior projects are now available in the wolfSSL download.
• EBSnet RTIP
• Yocto/OpenEmbedded.  A new Yocto/OpenEmbedded layer is available for easy integration of wolfSSL into existing Yocto projects.
• Nucleus RTOS
• TinyOS.  Several CTaoCrypt algorithms have been ported to TinyOS

yaSSL Embedded Web Server Progress

• Release version 1.0 with bug fixes and feature enhancements
• SafeRTOS port

Community

• MIT Java GSS-API for Android
• wolfSSL is now able to be used as a crypto provider for MIT Kerberos
• wolfSSL now supports ssmtp 2.64
• libscs now has support for wolfSSL

Are you interested in using the wolfSSL embedded SSL library in an extremely resource constrained environment? If so, you may be interested to hear that we have recently implemented a wolfSSL “Lean PSK” build which enables the wolfSSL library to be built with a footprint size of 20kB!

The “Lean PSK” build requires the use of pre-shared keys with wolfSSL, along with removing several additional features. If you are curious, or would like to learn more, please contact us at info@yassl.com.

One of the services that yaSSL provides is the CyaSSL Competitive Upgrade Program. With this program, yaSSL offers competitive upgrade pricing for those who wish move from an outdated, orphaned, or overpriced SSL library to the CyaSSL embedded SSL library with low cost and minimal disturbance to their code base.

Here’s an outline of the Competitive Upgrade Program:

1. 1.You need to currently be using a commercial competitor to CyaSSL.

2. 2.You will receive up to two weeks of on-site consulting to switch out your old SSL library with CyaSSL.  Travel expenses are not included.

3. 3.Normally, two weeks is the right amount of time for us to make the replacement in your code and do initial testing.  Additional consulting on a replacement is available as needed.

4. 4.You will receive the standard CyaSSL royalty free license to ship with your product.

The purpose of this program is to enable users who are currently spending too much on their embedded SSL implementation to move to CyaSSL with ease.  If you are interested in learning more, or interested in how CyaSSL compares to what you are currently using, then please contact us at info@yassl.com.

Although ECC support for the wolfSSL lightweight SSL library has been available in our GitHub repository for the past several weeks, we wanted to officially announce it to our users and customers. An official download of wolfSSL with ECC will be available on the www.yassl.com website with the next official release of wolfSSL.

wolfSSL’s ECC implementation can be found in the /cyassl/ctaocrypt/ecc.h header file and the /ctaocrypt/src/ecc.c source file. Supported ECC cipher suites include:

/* ECDHE suites */
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA

/* ECDH suites */
TLS_ECDH_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDH_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDH_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDH_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDH_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA
TLS_ECDH_ECDSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA
TLS_ECDH_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA
TLS_ECDH_ECDSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA

/* AES-GCM suites */
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
TLS_ECDH_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
TLS_ECDH_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
TLS_ECDH_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
TLS_ECDH_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384

To view or download the most recent version of the wolfSSL sources with ECC integrated, please visit our source repository on GitHub (https://github.com/cyassl/cyassl). If you have any questions about ECC support in wolfSSL, please let us know at info@yassl.com

Support for the MIT GSS-API library is now available for the Android platform – complete with an org.ietf.jgss (RFC 5653) compatible application programming interface, wolfSSL cryptography integration, and NDK sample application.

You may have read our previous blog entry announcing the initial phases of our effort to port the MIT Kerberos libraries and wolfSSL embedded SSL library to the Android platform (see link in Reference section, below). This post described initial availability of the Kerberos libraries to Android through the native NDK framework – enabling Android NDK developers to add Kerberos support to their NDK applications at a native C or C++ programming level. At that time, we also commented on next steps for the project and sought feedback from the community on adding a Java API to make using Kerberos on Android easier and more standardized.

Since that time, we have been hard at work enhancing the project, adding support for a new Java GSS-API wrapper, updating our example code, and adding new features to our sample NDK application.

1. Java GSS-API Wrapper

The addition of a Java wrapper around the native MIT GSS-API took part in two stages – a SWIG-generated (http://www.swig.org/) Java interface, which then in turn was used as a building block for a org.ietf.jgss Java API. The individual layers are visualized in the figure below. Both the SWIG layer and the Java GSS-API layer are able to be used in a Java application to access the underlying MIT Kerberos/GSS-API libraries. The SWIG layer is more tedious to use and less standardized than the Java GSS-API layer, but is closer to the C programming API of the native MIT GSS-API. We suggest that Java developers use the org.ietf.jgss Java interface over using the SWIG layer directly. As the org.ietf.jgss interface followed RFC 5653, Java developers should be able to refer to the standard Java documentation for the org.ietf.jgss package for usage instructions and class descriptions.

Source code for this project has been released under the open source MIT license, and is currently available for download on GitHub. Both the Java Generic Security Services API wrappers (SWIG and Java GSS-API), as well as example client and server applications and build instructions are located in the kerberos-java-gssapi package, at the following GitHub URL:

http://github.com/cconlon/kerberos-java-gssapi

2. Enhanced Example Code

Included in the Java GSS-API package, we have created several example applications to help developers understand how to use this project in their own application. There are two sets of client and server examples provided. The first one is a set of client and server applications which directly use the SWIG-generated Java interface. The second set of applications is a client and server that use the more standardized Java GSS-API interface (org.ietf.jgss).

It is recommended for Java developers to use the Java GSS-API examples, as they demonstrate programming and API usage which is more common in the Java programming language. Before running any of the included examples, the development machine must first have a krb5.conf file and KDC set up correctly to match the principal names used in the examples. For more details about building and running these example applications, please see the README included in the kerberos-java-gssapi package.

3. Sample NDK Application

As one of the main goals of this project was to bring MIT Kerberos/GSS-API support to the Android platform, we have created a sample Android NDK application to serve as an example and reference to Android developers. This sample application provides a GUI wrapper around the MIT Kerberos kinit, klist, kvno, and kdestroy applications. It also provides a sample client using the Java GSS-API interface to connect and communicate with the example server application (from Section 2, above).

This package contains cross-compiled version of the MIT Kerberos libraries, and includes instructions on how to re-compile the Kerberos libraries yourself for the Android platform. For details on how to build and run this example application in the Android emulator, please see the README file located in the NDK application package.

All sources for this sample application are located in the kerberos-android-ndk package, located at the following URL:

http://github.com/cconlon/kerberos-android-ndk

yaSSL and MIT are excited to bring Android developers MIT Kerberos and GSS-API support and look forward to seeing what kinds of applications will use this functionality. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, we would enjoy to hear it! Please contact us directly at info@yassl.com.

References:

MIT Kerberos: http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/
wolfSSL: http://yassl.com/yaSSL/Products-cyassl.html
kerberos-java-gssapi: http://github.com/cconlon/kerberos-java-gssapi
kerberos-android-ndk: http://github.com/cconlon/kerberos-android-ndk
Initial announcement: https://www.wolfssl.com/android-kerberos-port-using-wolfssl-embedded-ssl/

Thanks,
Team yaSSL