Re: [Cfrg] On "non-NIST"

[Watson Ladd <[e-mail]>]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 9:40 AM, Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On Feb 28, 2015, at 9:17 AM, Watson Ladd <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 7:41 AM, Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> On Feb 28, 2015, at 12:59 AM, Peter Gutmann <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> The term "non-NIST" is predictive, and the crypto community kinda sucks at
>>>>> predictions. We have no idea what NIST will do in the future if a bunch of
>>>>> IETF WGs adopt specific elliptic curves that are not P256/P384.
>>>>
>>>> Why is NIST seen as the ultimate arbiter of what's appropriate though?
>>>
>>> Not "the", but "an". The reason is that NIST controls what can and cannot be given a FIPS-140 certification, and that certification is considered important both by companies who want to sell to the US Govt and companies that use their certification as a statement that "we did it right". If you make an HSM that uses an algorithm not allowed by NIST, you cannot get it certified in the CMVP regime. Thus, when NIST is slow to keep up with the best practices adopted by the community, it becomes a roadblock to deploying better crypto.
>>
>> This is factually untrue: CMVP certified modules are permitted to
>> implement other algorithms: they just can't be in FIPS mode when those
>> are used.
>
> That sentence assumes a few things: an HSM that has multiple signing algorithms *and* a lab that would allow non-certified signing algorithms to be within the crypto module that gets the Level 2+ certification *and* the CMVP program allowing the lab's evaluations. To the best of my knowledge, this has never happened. (Disclaimer: NIST once paid me to become an expert on the CMVP process and how crypto vendors and labs dealt with it, but I have not kept my day-to-day knowledge of it up to date in recent years.)
>
> What you describe is quite common in devices that get Level 1 certifications, but it is not clear that something that normally is expected to have a Level 2+ validation, specifically like HSMs, would be able to do so.

Safenet's Luna SA Network-attached HSM claims FIPS 140-2 Level 3
certification and support Brainpool. Granted, I only know about this
because it's the one Amazon provides and I had occasion to read the
documentation.

But you're right that somehow we may need HSM and certification. But
this works fine for Brainpool, despite not NIST, and there are
alternatives to FIPS testing for HSMS for use with PKI.

Source: http://www.safenet-inc.com/data-encryption/hardware-security-modules-hsms/luna-hsms-key-management/luna-sa-network-hsm/#content-left
>
> --Paul Hoffman



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