RECENT BLOG NEWS

As you may have noticed we have made a few changes to our website – mainly in color schemes, layouts, and enhanced documentation. One of the largest additions to our site is the HTML version of the updated wolfSSL embedded SSL library Manual, which can be found at the following link. It can also be downloaded in PDF form if you prefer that.

wolfSSL Manual (HTML)

Our RSS feed link has changed due to our terminology change from “News” to “Blog”. Our new RSS feed link is as follows: http://www.wolfssl.com/feed

If you have any website feature requests, or think that there’s something that we need to add, please contact us at info@yassl.com.

Thanks,
Team yaSSL

Hi!

We`ve been making several changes to our website lately which we plan to roll out in the near future. One of the things we`re doing is changing the name of our “News” feed to a “Blog” feed. We thought that we better keep up with the times and start using the correct terminology.

As a result of this change, our RSS feed link will be changing. If you are following our RSS feed, please use the following link from now on:

https://www.wolfssl.com/feed/

Stay tuned for site and documentation updates soon!

Thanks,
Team yaSSL

Here`s the fourth part in a four part series giving a more detailed report on some of the new features present in the recent wolfSSL release.

• Shared build only by default.  wolfSSL used to build in shared mode and static mode by default, somewhat handy, but twice as time consuming.  Now, wolfSSL will only build in shared mode by default, seemingly speeding up the build by a factor of two.  Of course either mode can still be explicitly disabled or enabled.

• Compiler visibility additions.  wolfSSL now uses compiler visibility, if the compiler supports it, to explicitly expose or hide non static functions.  This decreases wolfSSL`s pollution of the global namespace and also decreases the chance of collisions.

• Single Makefile.  wolfSSL used to use Makefiles recursively, one for each directory.  While initially easy to setup, there are several drawbacks to this configuration including slow build times and increasingly complex interactions between the files.  The new single makefile is simpler and faster.  Thanks to Brian Aker for suggesting the last two items.

• Kitchen sink warnings.  wolfSSL now has a configure option (–enable-gcc-lots-o-warnings) that turns on many additional warnings that shouldn`t fire in a release.  wolfSSL has removed the ones that do, though not all systems, versions, compiler versions have been tested so we`re still fine-tuning these.

Please email us at info@yassl.com or support@yassl.com with any questions regarding the above feature additions, or wolfSSL / embedded SSL in general.

June 8, 2011 (this Wednesday) is World IPv6 Day, a day that several major organizations will offer content over IPv6 during a 24-hour time period. As stated on the ISOC website, “the goal of the test flight day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.”

Organizations who are taking part in World IPv6 Day include Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Akamai, Limelight Networks, CISCO, Comcast, and many more. You can find the entire list of stated participants here, http://www.worldipv6launch.org/participants/.

wolfSSL has support for IPv6 as well! wolfSSL was designed as IP neutral, and will work with both IPv4 and IPv6. The test applications included in the wolfSSL download currently default to using IPv4 (to apply to a broader number of systems). In order to change the test applications to use IPv6, use the –enable-ipv6 option while building the wolfSSL embedded SSL library.

Are you prepared for IPv6 Day? To test your current browser setup for World IPv6 Day, you can visit the following pages (which will run a test on your browser setup):

Google`s IPv6 Test Page: http://ipv6test.google.com/
ISOC IPv6 Test Page: http://test-ipv6.com/

To learn more about IPv6 in general, visit the Wikipedia page, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6. As always, if you have questions or comments about the wolfSSL embedded SSL library or the yaSSL Embedded Web Server, please let us know at info@yassl.com.

The 2nd and possible final release candidate for wolfSSL 2.0 is now available.  This release contains bug fixes for Alert processing and DTLS with DHE.  New features include:

– FreeRTOS support
– lwIP support
– Wshadow warnings removed
– ctc_ prefix for CTaoCrypt headers (manual still being updated for this)
– asn public header for better collision avoidance

Stay tuned for more detailed explanations of the new features that haven`t been covered in our blog series yet.  For questions or comments about this release or embedded SSL in general please contact the yaSSL team at support@yassl.com.

Ivan Risti?, Director of Engineering at Qualys, Inc., will be presenting the results of the first publicly-available survey aimed at assessing the state of SSL on the Internet. His results will be presented through a free webcast on June 22, 2011 at 2:00 PM EDT. The presentation will also provide documentation and free tools to test and improve the configuration on SSL servers. If you are interested in listening to SSL Labs` results, you can register for the free webcast using the following link.

https://www302.livemeeting.com/lrs/1100003821/Registration.aspx?pageName=q8118kzcjcbgb4pz&IsPreview=1

Qualys SSL Labs: https://www.ssllabs.com/

One of the services that yaSSL provides is the wolfSSL Competitive Upgrade Program. With this program, yaSSL offer competitive upgrade pricing for those who wish move from an outdated or expensive SSL library to wolfSSL with low cost and minimal disturbance to their code base.    
 
Here’s an outline of the Competitive Upgrade Program:
 
1. You need to currently be using a commercial competitor to wolfSSL.
2. You will receive up to two weeks of on-site consulting to switch out your old SSL library with wolfSSL.  Travel expenses are not included.
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. You will receive the standard wolfSSL royalty free license to ship with your product.
5. The price is $10,000.
 
The purpose of this program is to enable users who are currently spending too much on their embedded SSL implementation to move to wolfSSL with ease.  If you are interested in learning more, or interested in how wolfSSL compares to what you are currently using, then please contact us at info@yassl.com.

The wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library supports lwIP, the light weight internet protocol implementation, out of the box.  The user merely needs to define WOLFSSL_LWIP or uncomment the line /* #define WOLFSSL_LWIP */ in os_settings.h to use wolfSSL with lwIP.

The focus of lwIP is to reduce RAM usage while still providing a full TCP stack.  That focus makes lwIP great for use in embedded systems, the same area where wolfSSL is an ideal match for SSL/TLS needs.  An active community exists with contributor ports for many systems.  Give it a try and let us know if you have any suggestions or questions.

For the latest news and releases of lwIP, you can visit the project homepage, here: http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/lwip/

For more information, please contact facts@wolfssl.com.

The CyaSSL embedded SSL library has had support for TLS 1.2 since version 1.1.0 in September of 2009 (over a year and a half ago).  We realize that many people don’t know the difference between TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2, and we wanted to give some quick highlights on the differences between these two protocol versions.

As stated in the TLS 1.1 and 1.2 protocol definitions (RFC 4346, RFC 5246), “The primary goal of the TLS protocol is to provide privacy and data integrity between two communicating applications.”  TLS 1.2 is an improvement to the TLS 1.1 standard, but how exactly do they differ?  What was changed in TLS 1.2 to warrant a new version of the protocol?

Listed below are the changes made in version 1.2 of the TLS protocol.  TLS 1.2 support is slowly making it’s way into existing projects.  CyaSSL fully supports SSL 3.0, TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and TLS 1.2.

1. A. TLS 1.2

This protocol was defined in RFC 5246 in August of 2008.  Based on TLS 1.1, TLS 1.2 contains improved flexibility. One of the primary goals of the TLS 1.2 revision was to remove the protocol’s dependency on the MD5 and SHA-1 digest algorithms.  The major differences include:

1. –The MD5/SHA-1 combination in the pseudorandom function (PRF) was replaced with cipher-suite-specified PRFs.

2. –The MD5/SHA-1 combination in the digitally-signed element was replaced with a single hash.  Signed elements include a field explicitly specifying the hash algorithm used.

3. –There was substantial cleanup to the client’s and server’s ability to specify which hash and signature algorithms they will accept.

4. –Addition of support for authenticated encryption with additional data modes.

5. –TLS Extensions definition and AES Cipher Suites were merged in.

6. –Tighter checking of EncryptedPreMasterSecret version numbers.

7. –Many of the requirements were tightened

8. –Verify_data length depends on the cipher suite

9. –Description of Bleichenbacher/Dlima attack defenses cleaned up.

10. –Alerts must be sent in many cases

11. –After a certificate_request, if no certificates are available, clients now MUST send an empty certificate list.

12. –TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA is now the mandatory to implement cipher suite.

13. –Added HMAC-SHA256 cipher suites.

14. –Removed IDEA and DES cipher suites.  They are now deprecated.

To read more about TLS 1.2, you can find the specification (RFC 5246), here:  http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5246.

B.  Goals of the TLS Protocol

1. –Cryptographic security: TLS should be used to establish a secure connection between two parties.
   

2. –Interoperability: Independent programmers should be able to develop applications utilizing TLS that can successfully exchange cryptographic parameters without knowledge of one another’s code.
   

3. –Extensibility: TLS seeks to provide a framework into which new public key and bulk encryption methods can be incorporated as necessary.  This will also accomplish two sub-goals: preventing the need to create a new protocol (and risking the introduction of possible new weaknesses) and avoiding the need to implement an entire new security library.
   

4. –Relative efficiency: Cryptographic operations tend to be highly CPU intensive, particularly public key operations.  For this reason, the TLS protocol has incorporated an optional session caching scheme to reduce the number of connections that need to be established from scratch.  Additionally, care has been taken to reduce network activity.
   

Resources:

If you would like to read more about SSL or TLS, here are several resources that might be helpful:

TLS – Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security)

TLS 1.0 (RFC 0000):  http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2246

TLS 1.1 (RFC 0000):  http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4346

TLS 1.2 (RFC 0000):  http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5246

As always, if you have any questions or would like more information about the CyaSSL embedded SSL library or the yaSSL Embedded Web Server, please contact info@yassl.com.

If you`ve been keeping an eye on our blog lately, you`ve probably noticed our series of blog posts about new features and changes we have made in wolfSSL 2.0. If you`re as excited as we are about our next release, we hope you enjoy the following video link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw

Release Candidate 1 for wolfSSL 2.0 is available for download from our “Download” page (link). We invite you to download it and take it for a spin. Let us know about any bugs or problems you run into, and if you have any suggestions to make our 2.0 release more robust we`d love to hear them. Please send any comments or questions to info@yassl.com.

Thanks,
Team yaSSL