RECENT BLOG NEWS

The wolfSSL library has added support for the cisco/cjose library in version 4.4.0. cjose implements Javascript Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) in C/C++. JOSE is a framework that allows parties to exchange transfer claims in a secure way. The cjose library has been ported to work with wolfSSL, the best tested crypto library on the market.

To build wolfSSL for cjose:

• ./configure --enable-opensslall --enable-aeskeywrap CPPFLAGS='-DHAVE_EX_DATA -DWOLFSSL_KEY_GEN'
• make
• make install

To build cjose for wolfSSL:

• Download the appropriate patch from https://github.com/wolfSSL/osp/tree/master/cjose. Choose a patch that corresponds or is closest to your version of cjose.
• patch -p1 < <path/to/downloaded/patch>
• autoreconf
• ./configure --with-wolfssl=/usr/local
• make

To verify that this build passes the tests run:

• make check

wolfSSL currently supports cjose version 0.6.1,

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

This feature has been added in commit 0cfde0794b9c5ab1c01171745b800140ee4f8662.

S/MIME is short for Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, a standard for public key encryption and signing of MIME data. The S/MIME standard allows you to sign, authenticate and encrypt plaintext MIME messages. It is commonly used in email. wolfSSL now supports both “enveloped data” (application/pkcs7-mime) and “detached signature” (multipart/signed) messages.

To enable S/MIME support in wolfSSL, run ./configure with the --enable-smime flag, or add HAVE_SMIME to your user_settings.h file. Then, call wolfSSL_SMIME_read_PKCS7() with 2 parameters:

1. A BIO object containing your S/MIME message.
2. A NULL BIO pointer which will be set to the signed data in case of a multipart message.
3. This function call will give you a PKCS7 pointer, or NULL in case of an error.

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 Xilinx SoCs and FPGAs. The wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library can be used with FPGAs which use the MicroBlaze CPU and/or Zynq and Zynq UltraScale+ SoCs. Improved performance speeds with using the hardware crpyto can be seen. Increasing AES-GCM, RSA, and SHA3 operations performance. In addition to the performance gained a user also gets the additional security the hardware provides while executing the algorithms.

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

Did you know that you can build Qt 5.12 and 5.13 against the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library instead of the default OpenSSL backend?  Using wolfSSL as a TLS provider in Qt can have many advantages, depending on application and industry.  Some of these may include:

• Progressive TLS protocol support (up to TLS 1.3)
• Smaller footprint size (wolfSSL is up to 20 times smaller than OpenSSL)
• Extensive testing (wolfSSL is the best-tested SSL/TLS implementation available today)
• Certifications (FIPS 140-2 / 140-3, DO-178C)
• Portability (wolfSSL supports over 30 operating systems)
• Hardware cryptography support
• Commercial support
• Consulting services and training available

To compile wolfSSL for Qt, wolfSSL includes a configure option named --enable-qt.  To compile Qt with the wolfSSL, first obtain the Qt patch file from wolfSSL (contact us at facts@wolfssl.com), then follow the steps below:

1. Follow the Building Qt Guide to download needed Qt dependencies and initialize the Qt repository.
2. Change directories into the qt5 directory and checkout a branch between 5.12-5.13.

$ cd qt5
$ git checkout [branch_name]

3. Apply the wolfSSL Qt patch file to qt5.

$ cd qt5/qtbase
$ patch -p1 < /path/to/wolfssl_qt_src.patch

4. Link to wolfSSL directly by setting the WOLFSSL_LIBS variable.

$ export WOLFSSL_LIBS="-L/path/to/wolf-install/lib -lwolfssl"

5. Configure Qt using the “-wolfssl-linked” option, and add wolfSSL header directories to the include path.

$ ./configure -wolfssl-linked -I/path/to/wolf-install/include/wolfssl -I/path/to/wolf-install/include

6. Build Qt.

$ make

7. Test the build.

$ make test

8. Or, run tests individually:

$ qtbase/tests/auto/network/ssl/qsslcertificate/tst_qsslcertificate
$ qtbase/tests/auto/network/ssl/qasn1element/tst_qasn1element
$ qtbase/tests/auto/network/ssl/qpassworddigestor/tst_qpassworddigestor 
$ qtbase/tests/auto/network/ssl/qsslcipher/tst_qsslcipher
$ qtbase/tests/auto/network/ssl/qssldiffiehellmanparameters/tst_qssldiffiehellmanparameters
$ qtbase/tests/auto/network/ssl/qsslellipticcurve/tst_qsslellipticcurve 
$ qtbase/tests/auto/network/ssl/qsslerror/tst_qsslerror 
$ qtbase/tests/auto/network/ssl/qsslkey/tst_qsslkey 
$ qtbase/tests/auto/network/ssl/qsslsocket/tst_qsslsocket
$ qtbase/tests/auto/network/ssl/qsslsocket_onDemandCertificates_member/tst_qsslsocket_onDemandCertificates_member
$ qtbase/tests/auto/network/ssl/qsslsocket_onDemandCertificates_static/tst_qsslsocket_onDemandCertificates_static

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

Did you know that wolfSSL is OS and architecture agnostic, and it can run on bare metal? Did you know that we have DO-178C artifacts for our wolfCrypt software?

The DO-178C wolfCrypt product which is a cryptographic foundation for secure boot and secure firmware update has been integrated and tested with various operating systems including multi-core ARINC 653 compliant Wind River VxWorks 653 and DDC-I’s DO-178C Level A Deos real-time operating system.

You can start using wolfCrypt as an application with ARINC 653 for space and time partitioning in safety-critical avionics real-time operating systems (RTOS).

Let us know if you need help with security for your ARINC 653 requirements. We can make a world of difference for you!

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 provides a robust and secure DTLS 1.2 implementation. During the handshake process, wolfSSL will re-send its previous flight of messages in the following circumstances:

1. a network timeout has occurred waiting on data to arrive for processing
2. the last message of the peer’s current flight has been received out of order
3. a duplicate of the first message of the peer’s current flight has been received

These steps aim to provide a fast and reliable connection process. Unfortunately, the latter two cases may cause wolfSSL to use up more bandwidth than would be necessary for the handshake. If network bandwidth is at a premium for you and you are less worried about latency, then wolfSSL 4.7.0 has introduced a new macro: WOLFSSL_DTLS_RESEND_ONLY_TIMEOUT.

Compile wolfSSL with this macro, either by adding it to your configure command (for example ./configure --enable-dtls CPPFLAGS=-DWOLFSSL_DTLS_RESEND_ONLY_TIMEOUT) or by defining it in your user_setting.h header file. This macro instructs wolfSSL to only re-send its last flight of messages on a network timeout. In practice, wolfSSL will wait longer before re-sending handshake messages so that re-ordered messages get a chance to be processed and duplicate messages don’t trigger re-sends.

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 has a major new product in development — wolfSentry, the universal, dynamic, embedded IDPS (intrusion detection and prevention system). At a high level, wolfSentry is a dynamically configurable logic hub, arbitrarily associating user-defined events with user-defined actions, contextualized by connection attributes, tracking the evolution of the client-server relationship. At a low level, wolfSentry is an embedded firewall engine (both static and fully dynamic), with O(log n) lookup of known hosts/netblocks.

wolfSentry will be fully integrated into the wolfSSL library, wolfMQTT, and wolfSSH, with optional in-tree call-ins and callbacks that give application developers turnkey IDPS across all network-facing wolfSSL products, with a viable zero-configuration option. These integrations will be available via simple --enable-wolfidps configure options in wolfSSL sibling products.

The wolfSentry engine will be dynamically configurable programmatically through an API, or from a textual input file supplied to the engine. Callback and client-server implementations will also be supplied that deliver advanced capabilities including remote logging through MQTT or syslog, and remote configuration and status queries, all cryptographically secured.

Notably, wolfSentry is designed from the ground up to function well in resource-constrained, bare-metal, and realtime environments, with algorithms to stay within designated maximum memory footprints and maintain deterministic throughput. Opportunities include RTOS IDPS, and IDPS for ARM silicon and other common embedded CPUs and MCUs. wolfSentry with dynamic firewalling can add as little as 64k to the code footprint, and 32k to the volatile state footprint, and can fully leverage the existing logic and state of applications and sibling libraries.

The first beta release of wolfSentry is planned for April 2021, with turnkey product integrations to follow.

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

With the release of wolfSSL 4.7.0, we now support Keying Material Exporters for TLS as defined in RFC 5705! This new functionality allows applications to establish common secrets using the underlying (D)TLS connection. A popular project that makes use of exported keying material is OpenVPN (which wolfSSL supports!). It uses the user provided label, in the --keying-material-exporter option, to generate secure shared secrets for use by plugins from the (D)TLS connection.

To export keying material in wolfSSL, use the new API:

int wolfSSL_export_keying_material(WOLFSSL *ssl,
    	unsigned char *out, size_t outLen,
    	const char *label, size_t labelLen,
    	const unsigned char *context, size_t contextLen,
    	int use_context);

This API outputs outLen data to out. The label and context match those defined in the RFC:

label – “a disambiguating label string”
context – “a per-association context value provided by the [wolfSSL user]”

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

At wolfSSL we have found more and more customers choosing to use TLS 1.3. That’s great! More businesses are taking advantage of the improved security in the new protocol. These customers are finding that they need to use session tickets for resumption for the first time in their applications. In the latest release of wolfSSL, 4.7.0, we’ve made this easier than ever.

Encryption Algorithm

Session tickets require the implementation of a callback that encrypts and decrypts them on the server. There is a great example of how in wolfssl/test.h. Take a look at myTicketEncCb(). Previously the callback encrypted with ChaCha20-Poly1305 but now we include using AES-GCM instead. Choose the one that suites your application!

Default Encryption Callback

At wolfSSL we decided that a default callback was a valuable addition. wolfSSL 4.7.0 now includes a default session ticket encryption callback. Understanding how it works will inform you as to whether to use the default or write your own.

The callback is encrypting and decrypting the session ticket. You can choose which encryption algorithm to use by defining one of the following:

• WOLFSSL_TICKET_ENC_CHACHA20_POLY1305 – use ChaCha20-Poly1305
• WOLFSSL_TICKET_ENC_AES128_GCM – use AES-GCM with 128-bit key
• WOLFSSL_TICKET_ENC_AES256_GCM – use AES-GCM with 256-bit key

Otherwise, the default will be ChaCha20-Poly1305. If that algorithm is not compiled in then it will use AES-GCM with a 128-bit key.

There are two keys that are generated in the callback: primary and secondary. The primary key is generated, with a private random number generator, at first use and which point it is given a lifetime. By default, this is one hour. It can be customized at the second resolution by defining WOLFSSL_TICKET_KEY_LIFETIME. The lifetime must be larger than the lifetime of a session ticket which is 5 minutes by default. This too can be changed at the second resolution by defining SESSION_TICKET_HINT_DEFAULT. The longer the key lifetime the longer the exposure time if a key is compromised.

There are two lifetimes for a key: encryption and decryption. A key used to encrypt a ticket must be kept for the life of the ticket. Therefore the encryption lifetime is shorter than the total key lifetime, or decryption lifetime, by the ticket lifetime. See the diagram below:

If the primary key is expired for encryption but not for decryption, i.e is in the shaded area above, then a secondary key is generated on the next encrypt request. See below.

The secondary key is used until it expires for encryption and only then will a new primary key be generated. Note that in the scenario where session tickets are not commonly used, the primary key may expire for decryption before a new call for encryption. In this case, a new primary key will be generated. In a threaded environment, the generation of the global keys are protected by a mutex to ensure no overwriting.

Exporting and importing keys is also possible using: wolfSSL_CTX_get_tlsext_ticket_keys() and wolfSSL_CTX_set_tlsext_ticket_keys(). These APIs are useful for sharing keys across processes or server machines and expiration times are included in the blob.

The default session ticket encryption callback will cover most use cases. If you want to use another encryption algorithm, have very limited memory, or need an advanced sharing strategy between servers then define WOLFSSL_NO_DEF_TICKET_ENC_CB and set your own callback.

TLS 1.3 and TLS 1.2 Session Ticket Use

Finally, customers that haven’t been using session tickets for TLS 1.2 connections and now are for TLS 1.3, wanted to prevent session tickets being used with TLS 1.2. A reasonable request that we now support with the functions:

wolfSSL_CTX_NoTicketTLSv12()
wolfSSL_NoTicketTLSv12()

Calling these functions sets a flag against the context or object that results in the handshake ignoring session tickets on the client and server when the protocol version negotiated is TLS 1.2 or lower.

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

Did you know that wolfSSL is transport agnostic, and can run on bare metal? Did you know that we have DO-178 artifacts for our software? Are you aware of MITM attacks or spoofing attacks that could compromise your network?

Let us know if you need help with security for your ARINC 664 transmissions. We can make a world of difference for you!

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