FIPS compliance

[Tim Jandt]

The thread to which I'm referring can be found here:

http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/kerberos/2006-November/010870.html

Since your name and e-mail is at the top, and you signed the post, I felt the assumption that "You" posted this was most likely correct.

I appreciate your response, and in doing some further research did find a couple of independent labs that can verify compliance to the FIPS 140-2 standard, but have not found any that mention FIPS 197.

The two labs I found were:

http://www.corsec.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
and
http://www.rycombe.com/

Unfortunately, I feel no closer to determining how, exactly, I would prepare the product we are being asked to produce for compliance.  Guess it's on with the reading glasses and a snifter of fine single malt scotch for a trip through http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips140-2/fips1402.pdf tonight...

Cheers,
Tim



-----Original Message-----
From: Marcus Watts [mailto:mdw at umich.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 1:37 PM
To: Tim Jandt
Cc: kerberos at mit.edu
Subject: Re: FIPS compliance

You wrote:
> Date:    Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:32:16 CST
> To:      "kerberos at mit.edu" <kerberos at mit.edu>
> From:    Tim Jandt <Tim.Jandt at dedicatedcomputing.com>
> Subject: FIPS compliance
>
> Hello,
>
> I found a post in which you mentioned:
>
>
> "FIPS compliance is something you get by going through a very particular govern
> mental certification process, which normally does not deal with generic standar
> ds, but instead deals with specific and particular implementations.  Standards
> are described, but the compliance aspect is to show that a particular implement
> ation meets that standard."
>
> Would you by chance have links to any government agencies or test labs web site
> s that describe the FIPS certification process in more detail?
>
> Thanks,
> Tim

"You" here is a very vague word.  There are about 4 messages in
the thread you appear to reference, from different folks.

Just on the off-chance you mean me, here are some links:

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips140-2/fips1402.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIPS_140-2
https://wiki.mozilla.org/FIPS_Validation

The 1st is the standard proper.  At 69 pages, it's not exactly light
reading, but it could be a *lot* worse.  Beware, this may not describe
actual practice, particularly for software.  The 3rd describes the actual
experience of one open source project.  The 2nd & 3rd have pointers to
additional resources.  You can find lots more with google.

                                -Marcus Watts