Re: [RFC PATCH v2 0/4] Exporting existing crypto API code through zinc

[Theodore Y. Ts'o]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 05:24:41PM +0100, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 3:19 PM Herbert Xu <herbert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Yes.  In fact it's used for FIPS certification testing.
> > Sure, nobody sane should be doing it.  But when it comes to
> > government certification... :)
> 
> The kernel does not aim toward any FIPS certification, and we're not
> going to start bloating our designs to fulfill this. It's never been a
> goal. Maybe ask Ted to add a FIPS mode to random.c and see what
> happens... When you start arguing "because FIPS!" as your
> justification, you really hit a head scratcher.

There are crazy people who go for FIPS certification for the kernel.
That's why crypto/drbg.c exists.  There is a crazy fips mode in
drivers/char/random.c which causes the kernel to panic with a 1 in
2**80 probability each time _extract_entropy is called.  It's not the
default, and I have no idea if any one uses it, or if it's like the
NIST OSI mandate, which forced everyone to buy an OSI networking stack
--- and then put it on the shelf and use TCP/IP instead.

Press release from March 2018:

https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-completes-fips-140-2-re-certification-red-hat-enterprise-linux-7

    	     	       	   	     	 	- Ted