[EXTERNAL] MD5 and FIPS

[Matthew Heimlich]

The question of whether or not non-FIPS-compliant algorithms should be
allowed for non-cryptographic use is moot if you're deploying to
environments requiring FIPS validation where the FIPS requirement is
configured at the system level. A full audit of every line of code of every
application present on the system(s) is completely infeasible. There is no
reasonable way to ensure that people are using insecure algorithms "the
right way" in cases where security is a primary concern. A blanket ban is
the much more palatable option. And I can't think of a single case where
one couldn't just as easily hash files using a compliant algorithm outside
of support of legacy systems, in which case you'd have to go through the
POAM/waiver process anyway. You'll have a hard time convincing anyone that
an application under active development will undergo enough inconvenience
by switching to a compliant hashing algorithm that they'd waiver you these
days.

On Thu, Feb 2, 2023 at 7:00 AM Hubert Kario <hkario at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, 2 February 2023 01:45:00 CET, Sands, Daniel via openssl-users
> wrote:
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: openssl-users <openssl-users-bounces at openssl.org> On Behalf Of Dr
> >> Paul Dale
> >> Sent: Wednesday, February 1, 2023 2:33 PM
> >> To: openssl-users at openssl.org
> >> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: MD5 and FIPS
> >>
> >> If you are using OpenSSL 1.0.2 and the old FOM, you're out of luck.
> >>
> >> If you are using OpenSSL 3.0 with the FIPS provider, you can
> >> still access MD5 by
> >> loading appropriate providers and specifying a property query.  See the
> >> migration or FIPS guides.
> >
> > This sounds like an acceptable workaround.  So if I load the
> > legacy provider, then request MD5 (or SHA1) explicitly through
> > that provider, it should provide a working context?
>
> For some old FIPS modules you can also re-enable the md5 hash by using
> EVP_MD_CTX_set_flags(ctx, EVP_MD_CTX_FLAG_NON_FIPS_ALLOW);
>
> Looking how Python handles the usedforsecurity keyword argument in hashlib
> module is a usually a good idea.
> --
> Regards,
> Hubert Kario
> Principal Quality Engineer, RHEL Crypto team
> Web: www.cz.redhat.com
> Red Hat Czech s.r.o., Purkyňova 99/71, 612 45, Brno, Czech Republic
>
>
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