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The wolfSSL library has for a long time supported encryption and decryption using ECC with an implementation of ECIES (Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption Scheme). Recently the ECIES code was updated to support the SEC.1 and ISO/IEC 18033 variants.

ECIES is the elliptic curve equivalent of the RSA encryption algorithm and is useful as a key encapsulation mechanism (KEM). KEMs are used to established shared keys between two parties that have never communicated before. By securing, say, a symmetric key with the EC public key, only the owner of the EC private key can derive it.

Unlike RSA encryption, ECIES can also be used for sending a message securely to the owner of the private key (i.e. data encapsulation mechanism (DEM)). The integration of a symmetric cipher in the ECIES algorithm allows it to encrypt any amount of data.

In the real world, ECIES is used by standards like the Intelligent Transport Systems (ETSI TS 103 097) and is part of Android Pay and Apple’s iMessage and Find My.

In the wolfSSL library, the default algorithm is now as described in SEC.1. If you require the original wolfSSL algorithm then configure with -–enable-ecies=old or define WOLFSSL_ECIES_OLD. Alternatively, if the ISO/IEC 18033 algorithm is required then configure with -–enable-ecies=iso18033 or define WOLFSSL_ECIES_ISO18033.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

The wolfSSL library includes a useful tool for sniffing TLS traffic. This can be used to capture and decrypt live or recorded PCAP traces when at least one of the keys is known. Typically a static RSA ciphersuite would be used, however with TLS v1.3 only Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) ciphers are allowed. For TLS v1.3 all cipher suites use a new ephemeral key for each new session.

In order to solve this we added a “static ephemeral” feature, which allows setting a known key that is used for deriving a shared secret. The key can be rolled periodically and synchronized with the sniffer tool to decrypt traffic. This feature is disabled by default and is only recommended for internal or test environments.

As a proof of concept we added this support to Apache httpd to demonstrate real-time decryption of web traffic. We are also working on a key manager to assist with key rolling and synchronization.

A use case that might be interesting is a company internal web server that requires auditing.

The TLS v1.3 sniffer support was added in PR 3044 and officially supported in v4.8.1.
The Apache httpd branch with sniffer and FIPS ready support is here.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

The wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library supports many popular hardware secure elements from several suppliers using different technologies.

Some of these hardware elements are specifically designed to enable end-to-end security in IoT devices, by providing a hardware ‘Root of Trust’, and by providing asynchronous cryptography functionality and key vaults.

GSMA is an alliance representing mobile operators, manufacturers and companies focusing on the mobile communication industry. The alliance has published the guidelines to implement  a Root-of-trust mechanism, IoT SIM Applet For Secure End-to-End Communication, also known as IoT-SAFE. This technology promotes the use of SIM cards as Root-of-Trust to secure applications and services running on embedded systems connected through the mobile network. IoT-SAFE opens new possibilities for key provisioning through a component that is, in fact, already designed to support end-to-end security within different layers of the protocol.

wolfSSL, in collaboration with partners in the mobile industry, has recently developed an IoT-SAFE module for the wolfSSL embedded TLS library.

The code is portable and it’s designed to be used on an embedded board, equipped with an LTE modem and an IoT-SAFE capable SIM card, but can be easily adapted to run on any environment that has access to a communication channel with an IoT-SAFE capable SIM card.

The module includes several features, such as the possibility to use IoT-SAFE as true random number generator, access asymmetric key operations on the SIM, as well as generate, store and retrieve keys in the secure vault. The most important feature though, is the possibility to equip wolfSSL sessions with IoT-SAFE support, so that all the operations during the TLS handshake for that session are executed through IoT-SAFE commands. 

To demonstrate a full TLS endpoint using IoT-SAFE API to complete the handshake and establish a TLS session, we have prepared an example that uses a SIM card pre-provisioned with our test ECC certificate and keys. Both TLS 1.3 and 1.2 are supported.

Securing Device-to-Cloud communication with a robust end-to-end strategy is of course the main priority of this module. However, we are looking forward to seeing wolfSSL IoT-SAFE support used in different applications and use cases.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

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ExpressVPN’s Lightway protocol is out of beta and leverages wolfSSL for secure crypto. As such, the “modern VPN” inherits speed, performance, best-tested security and is able to maintain it’s lightweight mobility.

“In terms of the encryption, [ExpressVPN’s Chief Architect, Pete] Membrey explained that Lightway uses wolfSSL. ‘To be clear, we didn’t roll any of our own crypto. It’s something we – as a principle – keep well away from. It’s extremely easy to get that wrong so we outsourced it, effectively, to a library that’s open source and has been audited.’

wolfSSL is used on millions of devices already and is the library that powers Pokémon GO. It’s designed for embedded devices, so it’s fast on Apple M1 chip, on routers, iPhones and more.”

Learn more about ExpressVPN’s announcement on their blog and TechAdvisor.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

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A block cipher is an encryption method that applies a deterministic algorithm along with a symmetric key to encrypt a block of text, rather than encrypting one bit at a time as in stream ciphers. For example, a common block cipher, AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), encrypts 128 bit blocks with a key of predetermined length: 128, 192, or 256 bits. Block ciphers are pseudorandom permutation (PRP) families that operate on the fixed size block of bits. PRPs are functions that cannot be differentiated from completely random permutations and thus, are considered reliable, until proven unreliable.

Block cipher modes of operation have been developed to eliminate the chance of encrypting identical blocks of text the same way, the ciphertext formed from the previous encrypted block is applied to the next block. A block of bits called an initialization vector (IV) is also used by modes of operation to ensure ciphertexts remain distinct even when the same plaintext message is encrypted a number of times.

Some of the various modes of operation for block ciphers include CBC (cipher block chaining), CFB (cipher feedback), CTR (counter), and GCM (Galois/Counter Mode), among others. AES, described above, is an example of a CBC mode where an IV is crossed with the initial plaintext block and the encryption algorithm is completed with a given key, and the ciphertext is then outputted. This resultant cipher text is then used in place of the IV in subsequent plaintext blocks.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

References

[1] Pseudorandom permutation. (2014, November 23). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.Retrieved 22:06, December 18, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pseudorandom_permutation&oldid=635108728.

[2] Margaret Rouse. (2014). Block Cipher [Online]. Available URL: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/block-cipher.

[3] Block cipher mode of operation. (2014, December 12). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:17, December 18, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Block_cipher_mode_of_operation&oldid=637837298

[4] Wikimedia. (2014). Available URL: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Cbc_encryption.png.

A stream cipher encrypts plaintext messages by applying an encryption algorithm with a pseudorandom cipher digit stream (keystream). Each bit of the message is encrypted one by one with the corresponding keystream digit. Stream ciphers are typically used in cases where speed and simplicity are both requirements. If a 128 bit block cipher (such as AES [Advanced Encryption Standard]) were to be used in place of a stream cipher where it was encrypting messages of 32 bit blocks, 96 bits of padding would remain. This is an inefficient approach and is one reason why a stream cipher would be preferred over a block cipher, since stream ciphers operate on the smallest possible unit.

Some common stream ciphers include Salsa20, ChaCha (a seemingly better variant of Salsa20), Rabbit, and HC-256, among others. Block ciphers can be used in stream mode to act as a stream cipher. If a block cipher is run in CFB (cipher feedback), OFB (output feedback), or CTR (counter) mode, it does not require additional measures to handle messages that aren’t equivalent to the length of multiples of the block size, and eliminates the padding effect.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

References

[1] Stream cipher. (2014, November 19). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:19, December 19, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stream_cipher&oldid=634494612.

[2] Margaret Rouse. Stream Cipher. (2005). Available URL: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/stream-cipher.

[3] Block cipher mode of operation. (2014, December 12). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:13, December 19, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Block_cipher_mode_of_operation&oldid=637837298.

As some may be aware, wolfSSL added support for strongSwan in April of 2019. The upstream commit can be reviewed here: https://github.com/strongswan/strongswan/pull/133

Users can test the latest development master of wolfSSL with the latest version of strongSwan using the following setup:

wolfSSL Build and Installation Steps

$ git clone https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfssl.git

$ cd wolfssl
$ ./autogen.sh

$ ./configure --enable-opensslall --enable-keygen --enable-rsapss --enable-des3 --enable-dtls --enable-certgen --enable-certreq --enable-certext --enable-sessioncerts --enable-crl --enable-ocsp CFLAGS="-DWOLFSSL_DES_ECB -DWOLFSSL_LOG_PRINTF -DWOLFSSL_PUBLIC_MP -DHAVE_EX_DATA"

$ make
$ make check
$ sudo make install

strongSwan Build and Installation Steps

# if the following packages are not already installed:
$ sudo apt-get install flex bison byacc libsoup2.4-dev gperf

$ git clone https://github.com/strongswan/strongswan.git
$ cd strongswan
$ ./autogen.sh

# if packages are missing autogen.sh must be re-run

$ ./configure --disable-defaults --enable-pki --enable-wolfssl --enable-pem
$ make
$ make check
$ sudo make install

wolfSSL has had interest in enabling FIPS 140-2/140-3 support with strongSwan so our engineers verified everything is working with the wolfCrypt FIPS 140-2 validated Module!

The steps wolfSSL used for testing are as follows:

Testing was done using the wolfSSL commercial FIPS release v4.7.0 which internally uses the wolfCrypt v4.0.0 FIPS 140-2 validated Crypto Module. It was located in the /home/user-name/Downloads directory on the target test system, Linux 4.15 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS running on Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1270 v6 @ 3.80GHz.

1. wolfSSL was configured and installed with these settings:

./configure --enable-opensslall --enable-keygen --enable-rsapss --enable-des3 --enable-dtls --enable-certgen --enable-certreq --enable-certext --enable-sessioncerts --enable-crl --enable-ocsp CFLAGS="-DWOLFSSL_DES_ECB -DWOLFSSL_LOG_PRINTF -DWOLFSSL_PUBLIC_MP -DHAVE_EX_DATA -DFP_MAX_BITS=8192" --enable-ed25519 --enable-curve25519 --enable-fips=v2 --enable-intelasm --prefix=$(pwd)/../fips-install-dir
 make
 make install

2. A custom install location was used which equated to /home/user-name/Downloads/fips-install-dir and the configuration for strongSwan accounted for this.
3. strongSwan was cloned to /home/user-name/Downloads with “git clone https://github.com/strongswan/strongswan.git”
4. StongSwan was configured and installed with these settings:

./configure --disable-defaults --enable-pki --enable-wolfssl --enable-pem --prefix=$(pwd)/../strongswan-install-dir wolfssl_CFLAGS="-I$(pwd)/../fips-install-dir/include" wolfssl_LIBS="-L$(pwd)/../fips-install-dir/lib -lwolfssl"
 make
 make install
 make check

5. In the make check stage of the test, it was observed that 1 test was failing.

 Passed 34 of 35 'libstrongswan' suites
 FAIL: libstrongswan_tests
 ==================
 1 of 1 test failed
 ==================

6. Reviewing the logs it was apparent one of the RSA tests was failing.
7. Upon further debugging it turned out the failure was a test in strongSwan that was attempting to create an RSA key size of 1536-bits.

Running case 'generate':
 DEBUG: key_sizes[_i] set to 1024
 + PASS
 DEBUG: key_sizes[_i] set to 1536
 - FAIL
 DEBUG: key_sizes[_i] set to 2048
 + PASS
 DEBUG: key_sizes[_i] set to 3072
 + PASS
 DEBUG: key_sizes[_i] set to 4096
 + PASS

wolfSSL has a function RsaSizeCheck() which in FIPS mode will specifically reject any non FIPS RSA key sizes so this failure was not only expected, but it is a good thing for those wanting to use strongSwan in FIPS mode and ensure only FIPS-validated RSA key sizes will be supported!

wolfSSL is pleased that with the latest release of wolfSSL v4.7.0 and the wolfCrypt FIPS 140-2 module validated on FIPS certificate 3389, strongSwan support is working splendidly and wolfSSL engineers will be making efforts to ensure continued support into the future!

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

Microsoft’s IoT Developer Advocate, Dave Glover, has put together an Azure Sphere Cloud example that uses the wolfMQTT client library and wolfSSL’s Embedded TLS library to demonstrate a secure IoT device connection using the Altair 8800 emulation project.

Find the project here and read more about Dave’s effort to get the Altair emulation connected to the Internet of Things!

Everyone deserves to have their IoT data secure, and wolfSSL provides the best libraries to accomplish that. Secure-IoT-Love from the wolfSSL team!

You can download the latest release here: https://www.wolfssl.com/download/
Or clone directly from our GitHub repository: https://github.com/wolfSSL/wolfMQTT

Don’t forget to add a star while you’re there!

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

The wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library has support for PKCS#7 and you can use the wolfSSL Examples GitHub repository to take that functionality for a quick spin. PKCS #7: Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) is used to sign, encrypt, or decrypt messages under Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Using the wolfSSL API to do all of the above has been demonstrated right here with different implementations and content types. This blog will showcase how to compile/run these examples.

Build wolfSSL as shown below. Some of the examples which use the CompressedData content type require the zlib library to be installed.

$ ./configure --enable-pkcs7 --enable-pwdbased CFLAGS="-DWOLFSSL_DER_TO_PEM" --with-libz
$ make
$ sudo make install

Then compile the examples in the pkcs7 directory.

$ make

All executables are now built and can be run from the terminal, encoding then decoding their respective bundles and printing the status. For example:

$ ./encryptedData
Successfully encoded EncryptedData bundle (encryptedData.der)
Successfully decoded EncryptedData bundle (encryptedData.der)

Be sure to examine how wolfCrypt’s usage varies across different content and RecipientInfo types. And in no time, you’ll be putting wolfSSL’s PKCS#7 API to good use and further strengthening the security for your IoT devices requiring TLS functionality.

Documentation and more information on PKCS#7 are located within doxygen pages, here: Algorithms – PKCS7 (wolfssl.com).

Wikipedia article on PKCS#7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PKCS_7

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

wolfSSL supports TLS 1.3 ! http://www.wolfssl.com/tls13

Checkout out latest release: https://www.wolfssl.com/download

We are excited to tell you about our partner collaboration with STMicroelectronics! This collaboration is a video series about wolfBoot, a secure bootloader and the STM32, a family of 32-bit microcontrollers.

This will be at least a 4 part video series with the first two already up and ready and the next two videos already planned

Video 1: wolfBoot for STM32, Part 1: Overview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R4Gl0qrzZ0

• “Overview of the wolfSSL products and the wolfBoot support for STM32 devices. The wolfBoot product features such as secure boot, measured boot, encrypted partitions and root of trust (in the bootloader, TPM or secure element). Comparison of the SBSFU, TFM and wolfBoot options for STM32 micro-controllers. Implementation details for design of wolfBoot and how the partitions are defined.”

Video 2: wolfBoot for STM32, Part 2: Getting Started https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5VwYA5kknA

• “How to download wolfBoot, where to find files and documentation. The wolfBoot product features such as secure boot, measured boot, encrypted partitions and root of trust (in the bootloader, TPM or secure element).”

Video 3: wolfBoot Out of the box with STM32G0.

Video 4: How to expand the wolfBoot HAL support for a new target.

Stay tuned for more information on when the next part of this video series goes live.

Additional Resources

• https://www.st.com/en/embedded-software/wolfboot.html
• https://www.wolfssl.com/products/wolfboot/

If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.

In the meanwhile, check out the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library, star us on Github, and learn more about the latest TLS 1.3 is available in wolfSSL.