[erlang-questions] ERL-823: SSL cipher_suites too limited when compiling with OPENSSL_NO_EC=1

Per Hedeland per@REDACTED
Sat Jan 5 22:39:00 CET 2019


On 2019-01-05 16:03, Nicholas Lundgaard wrote:
> "Well, I'm not really an expert on this stuff"
> 
> That makes two of us, at least... :)

I was very impressed by your VerifyCurve function though.:-)

> You're exactly right, when I compile OTP 21 on CentOS with or without OPENSSL_NO_EC2M, in either case, the built OTP correctly leaves ec_gf2m out of the public keys and filters out the GF2m named EC curves that aren't supported in the CentOS/RHEL OpenSSL.
> 
> The remaining problem on RHEL/CentOS systems is that (for whatever reason) these systems lack support for a bunch of non-GF2m curves that Erlang/OTP's crypto/ssl modules claim to support, but emit runtime exceptions when you try to use them. It seems that is because they are explicitly hard-coded into the C headers in the OTP applications, when that information could be extracted or extrapolated from the linked SSL library itself (either dynamically at runtime or during compilation).

Traditionally the build of the crypto.c NIF module has been based on
the #defines in the *OpenSSL* headers, in particular
openssl/opensslconf.h, which is supposed to describe how the OpenSSL
libraries were built - this is where both OPENSSL_NO_EC and
OPENSSL_NO_EC2M originates (i.e. from using the 'no-ec' and 'no-ec2m'
options, respectively, in the OpenSSL configure/build).

I don't think there are any more specific #defines for the individual
ECC curves though - and in fact there doesn't seem to be any options
for that in the OpenSSL build either. But in any case, using only the
OpenSSL headers at build time, while linking dynamically with
libcrypto, means that the libcrypto found at run time may not match
the build, and runtime checks are motivated. And I believe both OTP
crypto and OTP ssl do some such checks, but maybe they aren't 100%.

> For clarity, I think this situation with these missing EC curves on RHEL/CentOS has been like this for many years with almost no change, so upgrading to a newer version of RHEL/CentOS/Amazon Linux isn't going to help. Here is the output from  'openssl ecparam -list_curves' on the latest (2018.03) Amazon Linux AMI running "OpenSSL 1.0.2k-fips  26 Jan 2017":
> 
>   openssl ecparam -list_curves
>    secp256k1 : SECG curve over a 256 bit prime field
>    secp384r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 384 bit prime field
>    secp521r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 521 bit prime field
>    prime256v1: X9.62/SECG curve over a 256 bit prime field
> 
> And here is the output from  'openssl ecparam -list_curves' on a CentOS 6.9 box running "OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013".  The older OpenSSL library omits the secp256k1 curve, but again, pretty similar output:
> 
> openssl ecparam -list_curves
>    secp384r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 384 bit prime field
>    secp521r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 521 bit prime field
>    prime256v1: X9.62/SECG curve over a 256 bit prime field

I also tried the 'ecparam -list_curves' on various systems, and was
pretty surprised by the result... As you can see, the list you get on
CentOS is way shorter than the list of successful invocations of your
VerifyCurve funcion - and with a "normal" OpenSSL-1.0.1 build, I get
this:

   secp112r1 : SECG/WTLS curve over a 112 bit prime field
   secp112r2 : SECG curve over a 112 bit prime field
   secp128r1 : SECG curve over a 128 bit prime field
   secp128r2 : SECG curve over a 128 bit prime field
   secp160k1 : SECG curve over a 160 bit prime field
   secp160r1 : SECG curve over a 160 bit prime field
   secp160r2 : SECG/WTLS curve over a 160 bit prime field
   secp192k1 : SECG curve over a 192 bit prime field
   secp224k1 : SECG curve over a 224 bit prime field
   secp224r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 224 bit prime field
   secp256k1 : SECG curve over a 256 bit prime field
   secp384r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 384 bit prime field
   secp521r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 521 bit prime field
   prime192v1: NIST/X9.62/SECG curve over a 192 bit prime field
   prime192v2: X9.62 curve over a 192 bit prime field
   prime192v3: X9.62 curve over a 192 bit prime field
   prime239v1: X9.62 curve over a 239 bit prime field
   prime239v2: X9.62 curve over a 239 bit prime field
   prime239v3: X9.62 curve over a 239 bit prime field
   prime256v1: X9.62/SECG curve over a 256 bit prime field
   sect113r1 : SECG curve over a 113 bit binary field
   sect113r2 : SECG curve over a 113 bit binary field
   sect131r1 : SECG/WTLS curve over a 131 bit binary field
   sect131r2 : SECG curve over a 131 bit binary field
   sect163k1 : NIST/SECG/WTLS curve over a 163 bit binary field
   sect163r1 : SECG curve over a 163 bit binary field
   sect163r2 : NIST/SECG curve over a 163 bit binary field
   sect193r1 : SECG curve over a 193 bit binary field
   sect193r2 : SECG curve over a 193 bit binary field
   sect233k1 : NIST/SECG/WTLS curve over a 233 bit binary field
   sect233r1 : NIST/SECG/WTLS curve over a 233 bit binary field
   sect239k1 : SECG curve over a 239 bit binary field
   sect283k1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 283 bit binary field
   sect283r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 283 bit binary field
   sect409k1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 409 bit binary field
   sect409r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 409 bit binary field
   sect571k1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 571 bit binary field
   sect571r1 : NIST/SECG curve over a 571 bit binary field
   c2pnb163v1: X9.62 curve over a 163 bit binary field
   c2pnb163v2: X9.62 curve over a 163 bit binary field
   c2pnb163v3: X9.62 curve over a 163 bit binary field
   c2pnb176v1: X9.62 curve over a 176 bit binary field
   c2tnb191v1: X9.62 curve over a 191 bit binary field
   c2tnb191v2: X9.62 curve over a 191 bit binary field
   c2tnb191v3: X9.62 curve over a 191 bit binary field
   c2pnb208w1: X9.62 curve over a 208 bit binary field
   c2tnb239v1: X9.62 curve over a 239 bit binary field
   c2tnb239v2: X9.62 curve over a 239 bit binary field
   c2tnb239v3: X9.62 curve over a 239 bit binary field
   c2pnb272w1: X9.62 curve over a 272 bit binary field
   c2pnb304w1: X9.62 curve over a 304 bit binary field
   c2tnb359v1: X9.62 curve over a 359 bit binary field
   c2pnb368w1: X9.62 curve over a 368 bit binary field
   c2tnb431r1: X9.62 curve over a 431 bit binary field
   wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls1: WTLS curve over a 113 bit binary field
   wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls3: NIST/SECG/WTLS curve over a 163 bit binary field
   wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls4: SECG curve over a 113 bit binary field
   wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls5: X9.62 curve over a 163 bit binary field
   wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls6: SECG/WTLS curve over a 112 bit prime field
   wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls7: SECG/WTLS curve over a 160 bit prime field
   wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls8: WTLS curve over a 112 bit prime field
   wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls9: WTLS curve over a 160 bit prime field
   wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls10: NIST/SECG/WTLS curve over a 233 bit binary field
   wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls11: NIST/SECG/WTLS curve over a 233 bit binary field
   wap-wsg-idm-ecid-wtls12: WTLS curvs over a 224 bit prime field
   Oakley-EC2N-3:
         IPSec/IKE/Oakley curve #3 over a 155 bit binary field.
         Not suitable for ECDSA.
         Questionable extension field!
   Oakley-EC2N-4:
         IPSec/IKE/Oakley curve #4 over a 185 bit binary field.
         Not suitable for ECDSA.
         Questionable extension field!

I haven't done a strict comparison of this output with the results of
running your VerifyCurve function on the same system, but my
impression is that all curves that were successful in the latter are
also included in the former.

I really wonder how the CentOS libcrypto was built. The "-fips" in the
version might be a clue, but I believe this only means that it was
built in such a way that "FIPS mode" is *available*, and thus it
shouldn't affect something like the set of "supported" ECC curves.
(If "FIPS mode" was *enforced*, it wouldn't work at all before OTP 20
I believe, and this is definitely not the case.)

Anyway, 'ecparam -list_curves' uses the OpenSSL function
EC_get_builtin_curves(), which is documented in the OpenSSL man page
with, among other info:
	
     Whilst the library can be used to create any curve using the functions
     described above, there are also a number of predefined curves that are
     available. In order to obtain a list of all of the predefined curves,
     call the function EC_get_builtin_curves.

So I guess this isn't really the set of *supported* curves, and the
OpenSSL ecparam(1) man page does say

    -list_curves
        If this options is specified ecparam will print out a list of all
        currently implemented EC parameters names and exit.
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^

- and there may already be some magic going on in the OTP 'crypto' app
to create additional curves "on demand". But by now I'm way out of
whatever expertise I may have...

--Per



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