Category: Uncategorized

Sick of all the tax day giveaways that you don`t really need, or worse, have to wait in line for?  How about a no wait release of CyaSSL 2.6.0 instead?  New features include:

– DTLS 1.2 featuring AEAD ciphers.  We`re excited about this feature and welcome any feedback.

-SHA-3 finalist Blake is now supported.  Blake2b is extremely fast and uses very little resources, so we like it a lot.

– Support for SHA-384 cipher suites including ECC ones is included as well.  And if you ever need to do HMAC with SHA-512 that`s now supported as well.

– The example client/server can now track memory and stack use with -t and –enable-stacksize respectively.

– IPv6 examples/tests now allow link-local with scopeid resolution and full ipv6 addresses instead of defaulting to localhost.  As before, use –enable-ipv6 to turn on IPv6 in the examples and don`t forget -b on the server to bind to any interface.

– CYASSL_GENERAL_ALIGNMENT manipulates the SSL input/output buffers to align crypto access for easier integration with hardware support.  SSL itself isn`t very friendly to alignment with 5 byte TLS headers and 13 byte DTLS buffers, but we think we have a good solution for this.

– Many new ./configure options including disable/enable for rsa, dh, dsa, md5, sha, arc4, null (ciphers), oldtls, and asn (no certs or public keys allowed).  ./configure options are all lowercase now for better consistency.  A cyassl/options.h header is also now generated during the ./configure process that allows a user to easily use the same settings/flags that cyassl itself was built with.

Please see the README and our on-line documentation for more information or feel free to contact us.

Happy Tax Day,
Team wolfSSL

TLS requires both end points to have received and processed their peer`s Change Cipher Spec and Finished messages before starting to transfer their bulk encrypted data. It needs the Finished message to validate its peer`s identify. To save one round-trip time, an endpoint after having sent its Finished message could start sending its encrypted data using that cipher specification.

wolfSSL currently does not directly support TLS False Start, but it is tolerant of a peer sending its data immediately after sending its Finished message. It just will not send encrypted data to its peer until it has completed its handshake.

Do you need wolfSSL to handle TLS False Start? Contact us at facts@wolfssl.com.

We would like to give our users an early heads up that our cryptography library, CTaoCrypt will soon be changing names to wolfCrypt. With the name change, there may be some changes to the existing crypto API. You’ll also begin to see changes in our documentation and website.

If you have any questions about the conversion, please feel free to contact us at facts@wolfssl.com.

Thanks,
– Team wolfSSL

wolfSSL now supports BLAKE2b hashes at the cryptographic level.  Support for digest sizes from 256bits – 512 bits is included.  BLAKE was one of 5 finalists for the NIST hash competition to pick SHA-3.  BLAKE2 is an improved version that simplifies software implementations and has great speed while consuming little resources, a perfect fit for our philosophy.  BLAKE2b is the version that supports 256bit-512bit digests and is actually faster in software than MD5.  We`ve seen over 4 Gbps per core in our testing!  To try it out grab our latest branch at github and –enable-blake2 on the ./configure line.  It will be included in our next major release as well.

wolfSSL GitHub Repo: https://github.com/cyassl/cyassl
BLAKE2 Website: https://blake2.net/

We have added DTLSv1.2 to wolfSSL. The latest sources are available in our GitHub repository. To enable DTLSv1.2 in wolfSSL, configure the build with the option “–enable-dtls”. We are very excited to offer this new protocol. If you are interested in discussing the cipher suites available for DTLSv1.2, please contact us at facts@wolfssl.com.

Here`s another good article on the Lucky Thirteen breach quoting SSL researcher Ivan Ristic:  http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3424689/new-attack-techniques-against-ssl-revealed/

Researchers have found a new a new attack vector for TLS 1.1 and 1.2 protocol implementations, which wolfSSL has promptly fixed in its leading embedded TLS product.

In the paper “Lucky Thirteen: Breaking the TLS and DTLS Record Protocols” authors Nadhem AlFardan and Kenneth Paterson present a family of attacks that apply to CBC-mode for TLS (1.1 and 1.2) and DTLS (1.0 and 1.2). All of the attacks are based on a delicate timing analysis of the decryption processing needed in block mode. The various attacks are distinguishing, partial plaintext recovery, and full plaintext recovery in nature. All the attacks exploit the protocol when badly formatted padding is handled during processing. A MAC verification must still be performed on something to prevent existing timing attacks. The RFCs suggest using a zero-length pad which was thought to be safe, but these attacks show that it can be exploited.

There are a few ways to avoid the attack. Using stream ciphers is the simplest. Stream ciphers like ARC4, HC- 128, and RABBIT are not vulnerable because they don`t use block mode and padding. HC-128 and RABBIT are unique to wolfSSL and also have the benefit of being extremely fast. Another way is to use Authenticated Encryption like AES-GCM and AES-CCM instead of block mode with CBC. wolfSSL includes several cipher suites utilizing Authenticated Encryption algorithms. Lastly, wolfSSL implemented the countermeasures suggested in the paper in version 2.5.0 to avoid timing attacks.

Founded in 2004, wolfSSL offers open-source, embedded security solutions that are fast, small, portable and standard compliant including CyaSSL, the C-language SSL library for embedded and RTOS environments; yaSSL, the embedded C++ SSL library; and yaSSL Embedded Web Server, a fast, embeddable, secure web server. Dual licensed, wolfSSL caters to the security applications in industrial automation, smart energy, surveillance, medical, military, telecommunications markets and the open-source community. Distributed worldwide, wolfSSL is headquartered in Bozeman, Montana.

Release 2.5.0 of the wolfSSL lightweight SSL/TLS library has been released and is now available for download. This release has bug fixes and new features including:

– Fix for TLS CBC padding timing attack identified by Nadhem Alfardan and Kenny Paterson: http://www.isg.rhul.ac.uk/tls/
– Microchip PIC32 (MIPS16, MIPS32) support
– Microchip MPLAB X example projects for PIC32 Ethernet Starter Kit
– Updated CTaoCrypt benchmark app for embedded systems
– 1024-bit test certs/keys and cert/key buffers
– AES-CCM-8 crypto and cipher suites
– Camellia crypto and cipher suites
– Bumped minimum autoconf version to 2.65, automake version to 1.12
– Addition of OCSP callbacks
– STM32F2 support with hardware crypto and RNG
– Cavium NITROX support

CTaoCrypt now has support for the Microchip PIC32 and has been tested with the Microchip PIC32 Ethernet Starter Kit, the XC32 compiler and MPLAB X IDE in both MIPS16 and MIPS32 instruction set modes. See the README located under the /mplabx directory for more details.

To add Cavium NITROX support do:

./configure –with-cavium=/home/user/cavium/software

pointing to your licensed cavium/software directory. Since Cavium doesn`t build a library we pull in the cavium_common.o file which gives a libtool warning about the portability of this. Also, if you`re using the github source tree you`ll need to remove the -Wredundant-decls warning from the generated Makefile because the cavium headers don`t conform to this warning. Currently wolfSSL supports Cavium RNG, AES, 3DES, RC4, HMAC, and RSA directly at the crypto layer. Support at the SSL level is parital and currently just does AES, 3DES, and RC4. RSA and HMAC are slower until the Cavium calls can be utilized in non blocking mode. The example client turns on cavium support as does the crypto test and benchmark. Please see the HAVE_CAVIUM define.

wolfSSL is able to use the STM32F2 or STM32F4 hardware-based cryptography and random number generator through the STM32F2 Standard Peripheral Library. For necessary defines, see the CYASSL_STM32F2 define in settings.h. Documentation for the STM32F2 Standard Peripheral Library can be found in the following document:
http://www.st.com/internet/com/TECHNICAL_RESOURCES/TECHNICAL_LITERATURE/USER_MANUAL/DM00023896.pdf

The wolfSSL manual is available online or in PDF format. For build instructions and comments about the new features please check the manual. If you have any question, please contact us at info@yassl.com.

Hi!  If you are a long time user of wolfSSL, then you probably know that we actively engage the open source community.  Our intention is to create more and better open source software for all to use and enjoy.  

What you may not know about is one of our key business policies, which is to provide free support to open source projects that consume our products.  So if you are building open source stuff, you are more than welcome to engage our support team for help.  The best way to do that is through our support forums.  However, if you have an issue that is sensitive, then you are welcome to email us at support@yassl.com.

We have added the Camellia-CBC cipher to CTaoCrypt and wolfSSL. The following cipher suites are available for TLS:

• TLS_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_128_CBC_SHA
• TLS_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_256_CBC_SHA
• TLS_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_128_CBC_SHA256
• TLS_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_256_CBC_SHA256
• TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_128_CBC_SHA
• TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_256_CBC_SHA
• TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_128_CBC_SHA256
• TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_CAMELLIA_256_CBC_SHA256

Camllia-CBC will be available in our next release. The latest sources are available in our GitHub repository. To enable Camellia-CBC in wolfSSL, configure the build with the option “–enable-camellia”. We are very excited to offer this new cipher. If you are interested in other Camellia cipher suites, including any ECC cipher suites, please contact us at info@yassl.com.