Re: [saag] Algorithms/modes requested by users/customers

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb at cs.columbia.edu>]

On Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:36:39 +1300
pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) wrote:

> mcgrew <mcgrew at cisco.com> writes:
> 
> >Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of
> >government, except for all of the others.  I think that the same is
> >true for the FIPS-140 cryptomodule validation process ;-)
> 
> I think it's more a case of the Politician's Fallacy:
> 
> 1. Something must be done.
> 2. This is something.
> 3. This must be done.
> 
> It'd be interesting to see a study of the effectiveness in terms of
> finding security and interop problems of:
> 
> A. A FIPS 140 eval.
> 
> B. Running the code through Fortify/Coverity/whatever and completing
> a crypto exchange with a peer (TLS, S/MIME, PGP, whatever the
> underlying crypto is that's being used).
> 
> in particular in terms of return for effort-involved.

Right.  But here's the problem with this choice: FIPS-140 is mostly
about assurance of security, and not just correctness of the crypto.
Given the really bad mistakes we've all seen -- things that would be
caught by any decent outside evaluation -- what is the alternative?
What is the *assurance* a customer has that the product is adequately
secured?

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb