RECENT BLOG NEWS

The average consumer in the US will “own 5-10 web-enabled devices by 2014” according to In-Stat.  See here for details:  http://www.embeddedinternetdesign.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228300296 (as of 26 March 2018 at 9:20am MDT, this link is broken and has no alternative). By our reckoning, that means about 200 Million devices that need to be enabled with embedded SSL to assure privacy and safety.  We’ll have our work cut out for us at yaSSL.com, which means we need more staff!  We’re hiring, and if you’re reading this, then you’re probably interested in this kind of embedded systems stuff, you like your command line, engage in arguments over code editors (VI vs. Emacs (we’re a VI shop)), and know how to write small, tight, portable code.  Let us how you would like to contribute or send your resume or CV to larry@yassl.com!

From the article:  “During a forensic autopsy an artificial pacemaker was secured for forensic information analysis. An academic hospital was contacted and they had equipment to read the data from this pacemaker via a wireless interface. The extracted information contained around 10 pages of details like name and date of birth of the patient, timestamps of hospital service, technical parameters, and stored measurement details related to the heart function.”
 
The article is a part of a series of extracts from a useful book called “Handbook of Digital Forensics and Investigation.”
 
See the excerpts here:  http://www.embeddedinternetdesign.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228300358 (as of 26 March 2018 at 9:18am MDT, this link is broken and has no alternatives).

As previously stated here, wolfSSL is getting ported to the mbed chip.  We’ve done the initial build and the results were pretty good.  wolfSSL takes 2.9 kB of RAM (10% of total) and 63 kB of Flash (13%).  That includes the test driver code which is about 3 kB.  More information to follow!  If you’re interested in building wolfSSL for mbed (http://mbed.org/), let us know and we’ll be happy to support you.

Hi!  If you’re wondering, as some are, whether there is any issues with wolfSSL for CVE-2010-3864, the TLS extension parsing race condition, then please note that this issue only affects OpenSSL, not wolfSSL.  CVE-2010-3864 is an issue specific to OpenSSL, which is an entirely different SSL library than wolfSSL.  This issue is not general to the TLS protocol, and has no relation to wolfSSL.

The yaSSL Embedded Web Server for AVR has some optimizations our users might want to hear about:  Assembly code for the AVR and AVR 32 instruction sets in the SSL cryptography. Assembly code for the AVR 32 instruction set speeds up public key operation during the SSL handshake.  Need to use it?  Already using it?  Let us know if you need any help with further optimizations or find any bugs!

Hi!  If you came to our site because you are considering wolfSSL as an alternative to OpenSSL, this blog post is your cheat sheet that details the differences between the two products:
 
1. Size:  With a 30-40k build size, wolfSSL is 20 times smaller than OpenSSL.  wolfSSL is a better choice for resource constrained environments.
2. Standards Support:  wolfSSL is up to date with the most current standards of TLS 1.2 with DTLS, which OpenSSL has yet to address.
3. Support for streaming media:  wolfSSL is up to date with the best current ciphers and standards for streaming media support.
4. Embedded systems support:  wolfSSL is the leading  SSL library for real time, mobile and embedded systems, by virtue of its breadth of platform support and successful implementations on embedded environments.
5. Commercial licensing available from the source of the code:  wolfSSL is available under proper commercial licenses direct from Montana, or under the GPL, whereas OpenSSL is available only under their unique license from multiple sources.
 
If you have further questions on how we compare ourselves to OpenSSL, please contact us at info@yassl.com.  

Machine-to-machine communication takes place between both wired and wireless systems all around the world every day. As stated here, “M2M uses a device (sensor, meter, etc.) to capture an ‘event` (temperature, inventory level, etc.), which is relayed through a network (wireless, wired or hybrid) to an application (software program), that translates the captured event into meaningful information (e.g., items need to be restocked).”

M2M communication holds a very important part in many business actions and decisions an as such needs to be secured. If your device has a TCP/IP stack in place, SSL, specifically wolfSSL, is an optimal solution for this problem.

wolfSSL is a small and lightweight embedded SSL library, offering your M2M devices a security solution which fits inside your resource constraints. If you have questions or would like more information on how you can use yaSSL products to enhance your M2M communication, please contact info@yassl.com

Earlier this week we stated our commitment to ARM by explaining our assembly code optimizations on a number of our math intensive cryptography operations. To give you more information, these optimizations are for Public Key operations with the CTaoCrypt fastmath option. This translates to a speed increase when using RSA, Diffie-Hellman, or DSA.

If you dive into our code, these optimizations can be found in the asm.c source file.

Today, Team yaSSL continues to exhibit at the ARM Technology Conference in Santa Clara, CA. If you are in the area, feel free to stop by our booth to visit or contact us at info@yassl.com with any questions.

The yaSSL booth at ARM TechCon is perfectly situated to check out the QNX based/ARM based Corvette on the show floor.  It’s a silver beauty!  See the pictures below.
 
Reminder:  if you’re building a QNX based car computer and need to secure it with small embedded SSL solution, then contact us.  One of the earliest wolfSSL users did just that, so we have some experience in the domain.

Hi!  As you may know from reading our posts here, Team yaSSL is exhibiting at ARM TechCon this week.  What you may not know is that we’ve been working with ARM’s mbed.org team to facilitate a port of wolfSSL to mbed.  Why?  Because hobbyists need security too!  And it is fun. 
 
Here at ARM TechCon, mbed has paired with Pololu to create an mbed-based robot.  Additionally, these two companies have created a contest for developers to race the robots based on the program they write.  We’re going to help ensure a robot does not lose because its communication is subject to an MITM attack!