[EXTERNAL] Re: MD5 and FIPS

[Matthew Heimlich]

It's worth noting that if FIPS compliance is configured at the OS level
(which is a fairly likely environment to encounter if you're specifically
developing a FIPS-compliant app), you will likely run into issues as soon
as you try to run any non-FIPS-compliant algorithm, cryptography-related or
not. We ran into this issue with a customer in the past when calculating
file hashes with older algorithms.

On Wed, Feb 1, 2023, 7:16 PM Sands, Daniel via openssl-users <
openssl-users at openssl.org> wrote:

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> *From:* Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill at hallambaker.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 1, 2023 1:41 PM
> *To:* Sands, Daniel <dnsands at sandia.gov>
> *Cc:* openssl-users at openssl.org
> *Subject:* [EXTERNAL] Re: MD5 and FIPS
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> You don't often get email from phill at hallambaker.com. Learn why this is
> important <https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification>
>
> Check out the recent vulnerability the NSA discovered in Microsoft CAPI,
> the attack uses an MD5 collision to introduce corrupted data into a cache.
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> This is the correct behavior and it is specified for good reason. If there
> is a FIPS requirement, it very likely prohibits MD5.
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> This is one of the many reasons we try to eliminate use of MD5 in
> specifications.
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> I know about the MD5 collision vulnerability and why it’s been downgraded
> from SECURE applications.  I am not talking about a secure application of
> MD5.  I am talking about file hashing for reasonable assurance that the
> file has not been corrupted by natural occurrences or transmission errors.
> We don’t even provide secret keying information, so it would be trivial for
> an “attacker” in this situation to simply hash the new contents and replace
> the checksum if so desired.  That is true even if SHA512 were chosen.  So
> as I say, this is not within the scope of FIPS.
>
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