WolfGuard: WireGuard with FIPS 140-3 cryptography

AaronFriel

The conventional wisdom in cryptography is that if you don't know you need FIPS, if you don't have paper and a dollar figure telling you how much you need it, you don't need or want FIPS.

elevation

Wireguard exemplifies the superiority of a qualified independent developer over the fractal layers of ossified cruft that you get from industry efforts and compliance STIGS. So it feels wrong to see wireguard adapted for compliance purposes. If compliance orgs want superior technology, let their standards bodies approve/adopt wireguard without modifying it.

pphysch

Can't you also get FIPS 140-3 WireGuard by compiling wireguard-go with the new native FIPS support in Go?

PunchyHamster

So a step backward in security ?

usui

I know software developers complain about forced compliance due to the security theatre aspects, but I would like to charitably ask from someone who has technical understanding of FIPS-compliant cryptography. Are there any actual security advantages on technical grounds for making WireGuard FIPS-compliant? Assume the goal is not to appease pencil pushers. I really want to know if this kind of effort has technical gains.

coppsilgold

It's unfortunate that WireGuard doesn't include a switch that if both sides agree the crypto in use would be AES and SHA256. Not due to FIPS compliance but performance and power savings. I never once used WireGuard on hardware that didn't have AES and SHA intrinsics, all that battery wasted.

gte525u

Are there benchmarks available to compare vanilla wireguard to fips wireguard?

cookiengineer

> XChaCha20-Poly1305 replaced with AES-256-GCM What could possibly go wrong? It's not like every CTF ever designed has a block cipher or counter mode challenge. /s If the project wasn't done by WolfSSL, I would have assumed it's a trolling attempt to mock FIPS requirements. But it's not, and that's the problem.

kittikitti

This is a great project, thanks for sharing. I'll be following the repository even though I don't plan on changing any of my WireGuard deployments.

gormami

For all those saying that FIPS is a step backwards in crypto, you are right, the standards always lag the state of the art. That said, CMMC is coming into it's own in the US MilGov space, and a LOT of small businesses need to be CMMC compliant, which requires FIPS certified crypto. So having an open sourced FIPS compliant option is a good thing for them. Good on WolfSSL for helping out that space.

MrDrMcCoy

How will this avoid trademark issues with WireGuard?

poemxo

I wish they would just add ChaCha20-Poly1305 and Blake2 to FIPS, instead of ushering in the era of WireGuard forks.