FIPS compliance

[Ken Hornstein]

Marcus has answered your question in detail.  I will only add a few extra
bits.

>I don't really know.  I know that Kerberos v5 is FIPS compliant and I
>know that SSH v2 is FIPS compliant.  However, are the Linux packages
>FIPS compliant?

When people say "FIPS compliant", they are usually talking about
FIPS 140-1 or 140-2.  These particular FIPS standards are significant
because government agencies are required to only purchase cryptographic
hardware and software that are certified to this standard.  Whether or
not government agencies can use open-source software that do not meet
these standards is a question which is open to interpretation.

Like Marcus said, protocols are not covered under any FIPS standards that
I am aware of.  Particular crypto implementations can be certified,
if you're willing to spend the time and money to do so (it's in the
tens of thousands of dollars when I looked into it).  I know of no
open-source Kerberos implementation that have been certified under any
of the FIPS 140 standards.  The situation with OpenSSH is more complicated.
What really gets certified is the crypto module, which in this case
is OpenSSL.  The OpenSSL FIPS 140 certification is in a weird state;
it might get resolved, it might not, but I don't want to go into that
here.

As a practical matter, all government agencies that I deal with basically
ignore the FIPS requirements when it comes to open-source software.  Last
week I saw a presentation by the people who are working on the FIPS 140
certification for OpenSSL.  After seeing that, it just reinforces my opinion
that FIPS 140 is a complete waste of time for software.

--Ken