[aisio]

"In OpenSSL 1.0.x, a quirk in certificate verification means that even clients that trust ISRG Root X1 will fail"

All current FIPS accredited devices use openssl 1.0.X, so the lets encrypt cross-signing hack will essentially break multiple corporate networks until the next openssl fips module is released at the end of this year. And could take another 6 months to make it into live systems

[tux3]

Isn't the point of FIPS accreditation that the organization wants to prioritize compliance over functionality/security?

A FIPS device being unpatched or broken for a few months almost seems like the natural state of things, at this point.

[josephcsible]

Yes, 100% this. The best evidence is probably that Dual_EC_DRBG got FIPS approval, but ChaCha20/Poly1305 and Curve25519 have not.

[tptacek]

https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/fips/186/5/draft

[xyzzy123]

This is a great start. More or less all web sites are technically non-compliant with Australian government security standards (ISM) because TLS has diverged so widely from NIST and those standards dictate NIST approved cryptography.

Nobody cares, of course, but it causes pointless conversations and wasted time with auditors.

[tptacek]

I'm just pointing it out because I once confidently stated that Curve25519 illustrates everything that is wrong with FIPS, which would, on principle, never accept it, and was thoroughly served with the existence of this document. :)

(FIPS is very bad).

[xyzzy123]

I just want to run a "best-practice-ish" TLS setup and have that be compliant :(

Re: FIPS, agree that it is fractally bad [Fully realise I am preaching to choir].

The funny/sad part is that there are financial incentives to be able to say "yes" to customers inquiring about "FIPS compliance" which perpetuates the sham. Service providers (e.g. Amazon, Azure) then necessarily apply "compliance lawyering" (selective interpretation and omission) to give themselves a tick in the box. They can get away with this because their customers are also only pretending to care.

All this serves to create a false impression that "FIPS compliance" might be a real property of nontrivial systems rather than a form of expensive signalling.

I had a longer rant about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15215756

[jstrom]

My experience with HW HSMs has been that the FIPS process is so expensive that companies are only willing to put out a new FIPS-certified version once year. Also the certification itself seems to be more concerned with high-level security requirements rather than proof that any particular features of your HSM work correctly.

So the answer to any particular bug is typically wait until next year's version which includes all bug fixes that the normal releases have built up over the past year, or re-evaluate if you really need the certification.

[kstrauser]

It is. You can be secure or you can be FIPS-compliant, but not both.

[rsj_hn]

That is a pretty skewed interpretation. FIPS mode does things for you like flag uses of the same private key for encryption and authentication, it prevents the use of weak keys, and prevents use of hobbyist or non-approved algorithms including some sketchy PRNGs. The executable signing also makes monkey-patching harder, so it's more difficult to hook into an implementation and compromise it without detecting this at the compilation stage. That can and does have real security benefits.

The downside of FIPS mode is that because the certification process is so costly and time consuming, it will generally run behind and not get the latest algorithms until a few years have passed. That type of conservatism in cryptography can be good or bad, but overall I'd rather use a FIPS system than not, given the large number of dubious systems in use, and the FIPS system will be more secure than the average non-FIPS system, but less secure than a non-FIPS system carefully reviewed by experts.

[josephcsible]

> prevents use of hobbyist or non-approved algorithms including some sketchy PRNGs

It prevents use of good algorithms like ChaCha20/Poly1305, and it allowed the sketchiest PRNG of them all: Dual_EC_DRBG.

> The executable signing also makes monkey-patching harder

Monkey-patching means patching at runtime. This is just as easy to do after the signature has already been verified.

> it will generally run behind and not get the latest algorithms until a few years have passed

It also won't get fixes for vulnerabilities until a few years have passed.

[dtech]

Afaik what lets encrypt did is not a "hack" and perfectly valid. It sounds like users who have FIPS requirement need to fix it for their won use-case since its a bug in what they use and already fixed for everyone else.

[aisio]

Many enterprises use a FIPS SSL proxy for all employees web traffic, so all websites with these lets encrypt will effectively be invalidated if the proxies are using openssl FIPs modules, same for FIPS client side applications

[jeroenhd]

It seems quite silly to me to enforce a massive MitM attack while at the same time sticking to the FIPS standards. Then again, a lot of governmental and financial security requirements are nonsensical to me, like mandatory password changes.

When I, as a website host, need to choose between accepting millions of Android devices or a few organizations with an esoteric security configuration, I'll go for the Android devices.

AFAIK Windows FIPS mode is unaffected by the OpenSSL bug, so not all FIPS modules will have trouble with the Let's Encrypt certificate. A Windows-based MitM-attack won't have this problem.

The best solution here would be for OpenSSL to have a FIPS release ready before September, or to release a patched version of 1.0.X, but that still won't help companies that cannot or will not update their software.

[alias_neo]

Some of it is misguided, some of it is legacy, other parts _do_ make sense to the people involved.

Mandatory password changes for example have not been recommended[0] by NCSC in the UK since ~2018. Continuing to do so is either legacy or misguided.

As for "MitM" it's usually due to regulatory requirements to protect and inspect at boundaries to and from an organisations network.

FIPS and OpenSSL is an interesting subject. Many organisations rely on it, yet relatively few contribute financially. When 1.1.X and subsequent versions came along and had no FIPS 140-2, orgs were forced to wait it out until someone else pays to get it accredited or pony up and help the process along. I haven't looked lately at how much has been contributed to the effort but I suspect it's still pretty low considering how much of the world relies on OpenSSL.

[0]https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/passwords/updating-your-a...

[slownews45]

Mandatory 90 day password changes are still required by the IRS in the US at least.

High complexity / weird rules too - and not one password across systems as they have endless DIFERRENT login systems.

So your tax software itself will require 90 day resets for all staff using that, every interface to IRS requiring it (which means every login for little used systems). It's bonkers. My worry - how do they even correlate / track login risk given all these different systems. Google (which has never required a password rotation) seems to be able to really figure out when risk is higher (new device from a new location) and lower (same device from 5 minutes ago). That makes turning on 2 factor with a hardware device MUCH easier - because it doesn't annoy you unnecessarily.

[jeroenhd]

90 days is such a silly time frame. It won't defend against passwords like Spring2018! (11 characters, capital letter, special character, yyet ccompletely predictable) and people will only pick easier passwords when they're forced to pick new ones.

Even Microsoft has stopped recommending regular password changes. I think password changes can certainly be necessary, for example when problems are found during an audit or when there are indications of abuse, but these old rules are making everyone's lives so much harder than they need to be. I hope the IRS will reconsider soon.

Google's method is quite advanced (different tiers of trust for different kinds of services). It makes total sense that you can search the web using an old session, but need to redo the whole 2FA flow if you want to change your password or recovery options. Unfortunately, working such a system out can be quite a challenge because it's hard to get the API segregated into the right trust levels without massively complicating the code flow.

[benlivengood]

There are two risk classes; reused passwords exposed by a breach, and targeted attacks (phishing, dictionary/brute-force attacks, etc). The first is easiest to detect by finding password dumps and by observing login attempts. Targeted attacks are best prevented by 2FA. There never was any middle ground where password rotation improved security. For any high security systems worried about insider risk or espionage they should have been using multi-factor authentication all along.

[alias_neo]

Ouch that sounds painful. If I'm not mistaken, all/most Americans have to interact with the IRS regularly? So this is an issue for many of you? By that I mean as a Brit who is salaried (PAYE) and doesn't own a business I have never had to interact directly with HMRC so even if it was as bad (it's not) it would be an infrequent experience.

[0xbadcafebee]

> It seems quite silly to me to enforce a massive MitM attack while at the same time sticking to the FIPS standards.

Well they're two different things. One is an often government-mandated security standard. The other is a business requirement to be able to audit network traffic, which is also often a government-mandated requirement (due to regulations, due diligence, contractual requirements, etc).

People making tech stuff very often forget that the entire world does not work based on "technical best practices", it works on laws and contracts and customer/business requirements. In the real world there is often no perfect way to satisfy all requirements.

[jeroenhd]

The reason the government wants FIPS is that it's been verified to be secure according to the national agencies. Enforcing that that security and then putting all if your sensitive traffic in the hands of one key on one box directly contradicts the security requirements FIPS is intended to ensure.

I don't expect the government to have different departments work together around this stuff, but knowing the technical details, the end result is still impractical and stupid. The end result of stupid rules and requirements is that the real world application of technology is stupid, as we have probably all experienced one way or another during our lives.

Just because there's a real business need for something, doesn't stop that from being silly. Correcting the silliness is clearly not a technological challenge, we'll have to wait for politicians and managers to do that, but the end result is still a confusing and contradictory mess.

[tyingq]

I don't have a lot of sympathy for the companies in this situation. If you want to MITM all your employee's traffic, then you accept the burden of dealing with stuff like this periodically.

[hannob]

I guess that will give them an incentive to fix those devices quickly.

[josephcsible]

Ha, good one. For the average company that breaks SSL, I expect something like this instead: "new corporate policy update: for security reasons, you're no longer allowed to visit HTTPS Web sites that use Let's Encrypt. If the Web site you want to visit still allows HTTP, that continues to be acceptable."

[hannob]

Ain't gonna happen. Let's Encrypt is too big to be ignored.

You can't practically use the web like that.

[ethbr0]

> You can't practically use the web like that.

is looking at a corporate firewall blocking Stack Overflow right now

... "practical" is setting your expectations a bit high.

[josephcsible]

We know this, but I don't think everyone does. I'm sure that at least some places will learn this the hard way.

[nix23]

If you need FIPS then pay for your Cert. No one wants to be stopped by such a stupid standard (except you get payed for it)