45. Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) CryptoDev Validation

45.1. Overview

Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) are publicly announced standards developed by the United States federal government for use in computer systems by non-military government agencies and government contractors.

This application is used to parse and perform symmetric cryptography computation to the NIST Cryptographic Algorithm Validation Program (CAVP) test vectors.

For an algorithm implementation to be listed on a cryptographic module validation certificate as an Approved security function, the algorithm implementation must meet all the requirements of FIPS 140-2 and must successfully complete the cryptographic algorithm validation process.

45.2. Limitations

  • Only NIST CAVP request files are parsed by this application.

  • The version of request file supported is CAVS 21.0

  • If the header comment in a .req file does not contain a Algo tag i.e AES,TDES,GCM you need to manually add it into the header comment for example:

    # VARIABLE KEY - KAT for CBC / # TDES VARIABLE KEY - KAT for CBC

  • The application does not supply the test vectors. The user is expected to obtain the test vector files from NIST website. To obtain the .req files you need to email a person from the NIST website and pay for the .req files. The .rsp files from the site can be used to validate and compare with the .rsp files created by the FIPS application.

  • Supported test vectors
    • AES-CBC (128,192,256) - GFSbox, KeySbox, MCT, MMT
    • AES-GCM (128,192,256) - EncryptExtIV, Decrypt
    • AES-CCM (128) - VADT, VNT, VPT, VTT, DVPT
    • AES-CMAC (128) - Generate, Verify
    • HMAC (SHA1, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512)
    • TDES-CBC (1 Key, 2 Keys, 3 Keys) - MMT, Monte, Permop, Subkey, Varkey, VarText

45.3. Application Information

If a .req is used as the input file after the application is finished running it will generate a response file or .rsp. Differences between the two files are, the .req file has missing information for instance if doing encryption you will not have the cipher text and that will be generated in the response file. Also if doing decryption it will not have the plain text until it finished the work and in the response file it will be added onto the end of each operation.

The application can be run with a .rsp file and what the outcome of that will be is it will add a extra line in the generated .rsp which should be the same as the .rsp used to run the application, this is useful for validating if the application has done the operation correctly.

45.4. Compiling the Application

  • Compile Application

    make -C examples/fips_validation

  • Run dos2unix on the request files

    dos2unix AES/req/*
dos2unix GCM/req/*
dos2unix CCM/req/*
dos2unix CMAC/req/*
dos2unix HMAC/req/*
dos2unix TDES/req/*
dos2unix SHA/req/*

45.5. Running the Application

The application requires a number of command line options:

./fips_validation [EAL options]
-- --req-file FILE_PATH/FOLDER_PATH
--rsp-file FILE_PATH/FOLDER_PATH
[--cryptodev DEVICE_NAME] [--cryptodev-id ID] [--path-is-folder]
where,
  • req-file: The path of the request file or folder, separated by path-is-folder option.
  • rsp-file: The path that the response file or folder is stored. separated by path-is-folder option.
  • cryptodev: The name of the target DPDK Crypto device to be validated.
  • cryptodev-id: The id of the target DPDK Crypto device to be validated.
  • path-is-folder: If presented the application expects req-file and rsp-file are folder paths.

To run the application in linux environment to test one AES FIPS test data file for crypto_aesni_mb PMD, issue the command:

$ ./fips_validation --vdev crypto_aesni_mb --
--req-file /PATH/TO/REQUEST/FILE.req --rsp-file ./PATH/TO/RESPONSE/FILE.rsp
--cryptodev crypto_aesni_mb

To run the application in linux environment to test all AES-GCM FIPS test data files in one folder for crypto_aesni_gcm PMD, issue the command:

$ ./fips_validation --vdev crypto_aesni_gcm0 --
--req-file /PATH/TO/REQUEST/FILE/FOLDER/
--rsp-file ./PATH/TO/RESPONSE/FILE/FOLDER/
--cryptodev-id 0 --path-is-folder