[openssl-users] FIPS certification for openssl

[Jordan Brown]

On 11/30/2017 5:41 AM, Michael Wojcik wrote:
> There are a great many OpenSSL consumers. Making radical changes to the default behavior of the API would break many applications - and so it's likely those applications would stop updating their OpenSSL builds.

Yes, compatibility is a concern.  So make the "default to secure"
options be new functions.

> If the application is well-written, the user doesn't need the application source now. If the application isn't well-written, being able to change "settings" is not one of your bigger problems.

You really think that most applications handle all this stuff right? 
See below.

>> Looking at it another way:  browsers manage to do it...
> Manage to do what, exactly? And how are browsers a good model for the vast range of OpenSSL applications? They're just one type of client that nearly always uses a very particular PKI model.

Manage to make reasonably secure connections with a minimum of user hassle.

Is it really right that a basic client (from the O'Reilly book) is over
300 lines long?  (client3.c, common.c, reentrant.c)

But the really dangerous thing is that if you miss a step, what you get
is a silently insecure connection rather than a failure.

Do you really like having OpenSSL featured in papers like this?
The most dangerous code in the world: validating SSL certificates in
non-browser software
<http://crypto.stanford.edu/%7Edabo/pubs/abstracts/ssl-client-bugs.html>

-- 
Jordan Brown, Oracle Solaris

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