FIPS is short for “Federal Information Processing Standard”, which defines certain security practices for a “cryptographic module” (CM). A cryptographic module is set of hardware, software, and/or firmware that implements approved security functions (including cryptographic algorithms and key generation) and is contained within a cryptographic boundary.
At GitLab, a cryptographic module almost always refers to an embedded software component of another product or package release and is specific to a particular version of a binary. For example, a particular version of Ubuntu Kernel Crypto API cryptographic module or the OpenSSL project’s FIPS Provider.
A module is validated after it completes testing by a NIST-certified laboratory and has an active certificate listed in the Cryptographic Module Validation Program. A cryptographic module must be compiled, installed, and configured according to its CMVP security policy.
Why should you care?GitLab is committed to releasing software for our customers who are required to comply with FIPS 140-2 and 140-3.
FIPS 140 is a requirement to do business within the U.S. public sector, as well as some non-U.S. public sector organizations and certain industries depending on the use case (healthcare, banking, etc.). FIPS 140-2 and FIPS 140-3 requirements are applicable to all U.S. Federal agencies, including software they purchase whether that be self-managed or cloud. Agencies must use cryptographic-based security systems to provide adequate information security for all operations and assets as defined in 15 U.S.C. § 278g-3.
Non-validated cryptography is currently viewed as providing no protection to the information or data. In effect, the data would be considered unprotected plaintext. If the agency specifies that the information or data be cryptographically protected, then FIPS 140-2 or FIPS 140-3 is applicable. In essence, if cryptography is required, then it must be validated. Should the cryptographic module be revoked, use of that module is no longer permitted.
The challenge is that the use of FIPS-validated modules requires use of specific versions of a software package or binary. Historically, some organizations would pin or version-lock to maintain compliance. The problem is that these validated modules inevitably become vulnerable, and the long lead time associated with obtaining validation for a new version means it is impractical to consistently achieve both federal mandates:
The regulatory environment and policymaking in this area is dynamic and requires close monitoring by GitLab.
Terms to avoidThese phases are used extensively at GitLab and among software providers. However, we should aim to avoid using them and update our documentation.
The following official terms and phrases are approved for use by the CMVP.
GitLab is a SaaS First company and, as such, we follow the latest guidance from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). FedRAMP requires cloud service providers to use FIPS-validated cryptographic modules everywhere cryptography is required including for encryption, hashing, random number generation, and key generation. However, per control SC-13 from the FedRAMP security controls baseline, it is acceptable to use a cryptographic module that is not FIPS-validated when:
FedRAMP released a draft (read: subject to change) Policy for Cryptographic Module Selection and Use which aims to provide more practical implementation guidance. Notably, the preference to remediate known vulnerabilities through patches or updates over continuing to use known-vulnerable software that is FIPS-validated because the presence of known vulnerabilities creates risks that outweigh the assurance value provided through validation.
As required by CSP01 in this draft policy, GitLab takes the stance of applying patches to cryptographic modules. The order of preference for cryptographic module selection per CSP10 is as follows:
Third party assessment organizations (3PAOs) validate the use of a FIPS-validated CM by:
GitLab also does internal continuous monitoring and, in the past, has contracted independent auditors to audit our software against the FIPS 140 standard. Results are available in the Trust Center.
GitLab FIPS-approved softwareGitLab currently releases software for Omnibus (Linux package) deployments, cloud-native (Helm chart) deployments, GitLab Runner, security analyzers, and more. As stated above, GitLab follows FedRAMP guidance and, as such, we strive to include FIPS 140-2 validated modules (FIPS inside) when possible but, at minimum, includes FIPS-approved algorithms (CMVP-approved security functions). GitLab favors security over compliance in situations where it is not possible to achieve both with respect to FIPS 140-2.
Unsupported features in FIPS modeSome GitLab features may not work when FIPS mode is enabled. The following features are known to not work in FIPS mode. However, there may be additional features not listed here that also do not work properly in FIPS mode:
Additionally, these package repositories are disabled in FIPS mode:
Development guidelinesFor more information, refer to the information above and see the GitLab Cryptography Standard. Reach out to #sec-assurance
with questions or open an MR if something needs to be clarified.
Here are some guidelines for developing GitLab FIPS-approved software:
We should make most, if not all, cryptographic calls use a FIPS-validated OpenSSL (example), whether that be:
OpenSSL 3.0 now makes it possible to use a CMVP-validated module called the OpenSSL FIPS Provider fips.so
while also allowing security patches to the rest of OpenSSL without invalidating the module (refer to OpenSSL README-FIPS.md). This is also now available to consume on RHEL 9 and UBI9 (CMVP certificate #4746).
We should avoid non-approved cryptographic algorithms (for example, MD5) and switch to an approved FIPS 140-3 algorithm (for example, SHA256). Because MD5 is cryptographically broken, this is a good practice.
There may be instances where a non-approved cryptographic algorithm can be used for non-cryptographic purposes. For example, SHA1 is not a FIPS 140-3 algorithm, but because Git uses it for non-cryptographic purposes, we can use it. In these cases, we must document why it’s not being used for cryptographic purposes, or disable the feature outright.
Backwards compatibility. There may be some features where switching algorithms would break existing functionality. For example, the database stores passwords encrypted with bcrypt, and these passwords cannot be re-encrypted without user help.
This guide is specifically for public users or GitLab team members with a requirement to run a production instance of GitLab that is FIPS compliant. This guide outlines a hybrid deployment using elements from both Omnibus and our Cloud Native GitLab installations.
PrerequisitesYou can use the GitLab Environment Toolkit to spin up a FIPS-enabled cluster for development and testing. As mentioned in the prerequisites, these instructions use Amazon Web Services (AWS) because that is the first target environment.
Set up your environmentTo get started, your AWS account must subscribe to a FIPS-enabled Amazon Machine Image (AMI) in the AWS Marketplace console.
This example assumes that the Ubuntu Pro 20.04 FIPS LTS
AMI by Canonical Group Limited
has been added your account. This operating system is used for virtual machines running in Amazon EC2.
The simplest way to get a FIPS-enabled GitLab cluster is to use an Omnibus reference architecture. See the GET Quick Start Guide for more details. The following instructions build on the Quick Start and are also necessary for Cloud Native Hybrid installations.
Terraform: Use a FIPS AMIGitLab team members can view more information in this internal handbook page on how to use FIPS AMI: https://internal.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/fedramp-compliance/get-configure/#terraform---use-fips-ami
The standard Omnibus GitLab releases build their own OpenSSL library, which is not FIPS-validated. However, we have nightly builds that create Omnibus packages that link against the operating system’s OpenSSL library. To use this package, update the gitlab_edition
and gitlab_repo_script_url
fields in the Ansible vars.yml
.
GitLab team members can view more information in this internal handbook page on Ansible (AWS): https://internal.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/fedramp-compliance/get-configure/#ansible-aws
A Cloud Native Hybrid install uses both Omnibus and Cloud Native GitLab (CNG) images. The previous instructions cover the Omnibus part, but two additional steps are needed to enable FIPS in CNG:
Because Amazon does not yet publish a FIPS-enabled AMI, you have to build one yourself with Packer.
Amazon publishes the following Git repositories with information about custom EKS AMIs:
This GitHub pull request makes it possible to create an Amazon Linux 2 EKS AMI with FIPS enabled for Kubernetes v1.21. To build an image:
Run the following:
git clone https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-eks-ami
cd amazon-eks-ami
git fetch origin pull/898/head:fips-ami
git checkout fips-ami
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1 make 1.21-fips # Be sure to set the region accordingly
If you are using a different version of Kubernetes, adjust the make
command and Makefile
accordingly.
When the AMI build is done, a new AMI should be created with a message such as the following:
==> Builds finished. The artifacts of successful builds are:
--> amazon-ebs: AMIs were created:
us-west-2: ami-0a25e760cd00b027e
In this example, the AMI ID is ami-0a25e760cd00b027e
, but your value may be different.
Building a RHEL-based system with FIPS enabled should be possible, but there is an outstanding issue preventing the Packer build from completing.
Because this builds a custom AMI based on a specific version of an image, you must periodically rebuild the custom AMI to keep current with the latest security patches and upgrades.
Terraform: Use a custom EKS AMIGitLab team members can view more information in this internal handbook page on how to use a custom EKS AMI: https://internal.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/fedramp-compliance/get-configure/#terraform---use-a-custom-eks-ami
CNG uses a Helm Chart to manage which container images to deploy. To use UBI-based containers, edit the Ansible vars.yml
to use custom Charts variables:
all:
vars:
# ...
gitlab_charts_custom_config_file: '/path/to/gitlab-environment-toolkit/ansible/environments/gitlab-10k/inventory/charts.yml'
Now create charts.yml
in the location specified above and specify tags with a -fips
suffix.
See our Charts documentation on FIPS for more details, including an example values file as a reference.
You can also use release tags, but the versioning is tricky because each component may use its own versioning scheme. For example, for GitLab v15.2:
global:
image:
tagSuffix: -fips
certificates:
image:
tag: 20211220-r0
kubectl:
image:
tag: 1.18.20
gitlab:
gitaly:
image:
tag: v15.2.0
gitlab-exporter:
image:
tag: 11.17.1
gitlab-shell:
image:
tag: v14.9.0
gitlab-mailroom:
image:
tag: v15.2.0
gitlab-pages:
image:
tag: v1.61.0
migrations:
image:
tag: v15.2.0
sidekiq:
image:
tag: v15.2.0
toolbox:
image:
tag: v15.2.0
webservice:
image:
tag: v15.2.0
workhorse:
tag: v15.2.0
FIPS Performance Benchmarking
The Quality Engineering Enablement team assists these efforts by checking if FIPS-enabled environments perform well compared to non-FIPS environments.
Testing shows an impact in some places, such as Gitaly SSL, but it’s not large enough to impact customers.
You can find more information on FIPS performance benchmarking in the following issue:
Setting up a FIPS-enabled development environmentThe simplest approach is to set up a virtual machine running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.
Red Hat provide free licenses to developers, and permit the CD image to be downloaded from the Red Hat developer’s portal. Registration is required.
After the virtual machine is set up, you can follow the GDK installation instructions, including the advanced instructions for RHEL. The asdf
tool is not used for dependency management because it’s essential to use the RedHat-provided Go compiler and other system dependencies.
After GDK and its dependencies are installed, run this command (as root) and restart the virtual machine:
You can check whether it’s taken effect by running:
In this environment, OpenSSL refuses to perform cryptographic operations forbidden by the FIPS standards. This enables you to reproduce FIPS-related bugs, and validate fixes.
You should be able to open a web browser inside the virtual machine and sign in to the GitLab instance.
You can disable FIPS mode again by running this command, then restarting the virtual machine:
fips-mode-setup --disable
Detect FIPS enablement in code
You can query Gitlab::FIPS
in Ruby code to determine if the instance is FIPS-enabled:
def default_min_key_size(name)
if Gitlab::FIPS.enabled?
Gitlab::SSHPublicKey.supported_sizes(name).select(&:positive?).min || -1
else
0
end
end
Omnibus FIPS packages
GitLab has a dedicated repository (gitlab/gitlab-fips
) for builds of the Omnibus GitLab which are built with FIPS compliance. These GitLab builds are compiled to use the system OpenSSL, instead of the Omnibus-embedded version of OpenSSL. These packages are built for:
These are consumed by the GitLab Environment Toolkit (GET).
See the section on how FIPS builds are created.
System LibgcryptBecause of a bug, FIPS Linux packages for GitLab 17.6 and earlier did not use the system Libgcrypt, but the same Libgcrypt bundled with regular Linux packages.
This issue is fixed for all FIPS Linux packages for GitLab 17.7, except for AmazonLinux 2. The Libgcrypt version of AmazonLinux 2 is not compatible with the GPGME and GnuPG versions shipped with the FIPS Linux packages.
FIPS Linux packages for AmazonLinux 2 will continue to use the same Libgcrypt bundled with the regular Linux packages, otherwise we would have to downgrade GPGME and GnuPG.
If you require full compliance, you must migrate to another operating system for which FIPS Linux packages are available.
Nightly Omnibus FIPS buildsThe Distribution team has created nightly FIPS Omnibus builds, which can be used for testing purposes. These should never be used for production environments.
RunnerSee the documentation on installing a FIPS-compliant GitLab Runner.
Verify FIPSThe following sections describe ways you can verify if FIPS is enabled.
Kernel$ cat /proc/sys/crypto/fips_enabled
1
Ruby (Omnibus images)
$ /opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'openssl'; OpenSSL.fips_mode
=> true
Ruby (CNG images)
$ irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'openssl'; OpenSSL.fips_mode
=> true
Go
Google maintains a dev.boringcrypto
branch in the Go compiler that makes it possible to statically link BoringSSL, a FIPS-validated module forked from OpenSSL. However, BoringCrypto is not officially supported, although it is used by other companies.
GitLab uses golang-fips
, a fork of the dev.boringcrypto
branch to build Go programs that dynamically link OpenSSL via dlopen
. This has several advantages:
However, cgo must be enabled via CGO_ENABLED=1
for this to work. There is a performance hit when calling into C code.
Projects that are compiled with golang-fips
on Linux x86 automatically get built the crypto routines that use OpenSSL. While the boringcrypto
build tag is automatically present, no extra build tags are actually needed. There are specific build tags that disable these crypto hooks.
We can check whether a given binary is using OpenSSL via go tool nm
and look for symbols named Cfunc__goboringcrypto
or crypto/internal/boring/sig.BoringCrypto
.
For example:
$ # Find in a Golang-FIPS 1.17 library
$ go tool nm nginx-ingress-controller | grep '_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_|\bcrypto/internal/boring/sig\.BoringCrypto' | tail
2a0b650 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA384_Final
2a0b658 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA384_Init
2a0b660 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA384_Update
2a0b668 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA512_Final
2a0b670 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA512_Init
2a0b678 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA512_Update
2a0b680 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_internal_ECDSA_sign
2a0b688 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_internal_ECDSA_verify
2a0b690 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_internal_ERR_error_string_n
2a0b698 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_internal_ERR_get_error
$ # Find in a Golang-FIPS 1.22 library
$ go tool nm tenctl | grep '_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_|\bcrypto/internal/boring/sig\.BoringCrypto'
4cb840 t crypto/internal/boring/sig.BoringCrypto.abi0
In addition, LabKit contains routines to check whether FIPS is enabled.
How FIPS builds are createdMany GitLab projects (for example: Gitaly, GitLab Pages) have standardized on using FIPS_MODE=1 make
to build FIPS binaries locally.
The Omnibus FIPS builds are triggered with the USE_SYSTEM_SSL
environment variable set to true
. When this environment variable is set, the Omnibus recipes dependencies such as curl
, NGINX, and libgit2 will link against the system OpenSSL. OpenSSL will NOT be included in the Omnibus build.
The Omnibus builds are created using container images that use the golang-fips
compiler. For example, this job created the registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-omnibus-builder/centos_8_fips:3.3.1
image used to build packages for RHEL 8.
First, you need to make sure there is an Omnibus builder image for the desired Linux distribution. The images used to build Omnibus packages are created with Omnibus Builder images.
Review this merge request. A new image can be added by:
_fips
suffix (for example: ubuntu_18.04_fips
).Dockerfile
uses Snippets.new(fips: fips).populate
instead of Snippets.new.populate
.After this image has been tagged, add a new CI job to Omnibus GitLab.
Cloud Native GitLab (CNG)The Cloud Native GitLab CI pipeline generates images using several base images:
UBI images ship with the same OpenSSL package as those used by RHEL. This makes it possible to build FIPS-compliant binaries without needing RHEL. RHEL 8.2 ships a FIPS-validated OpenSSL, but 8.5 is in review for FIPS validation.
This merge request introduces a FIPS pipeline for CNG images. Images tagged for FIPS have the -fips
suffix. For example, the webservice
container has the following tags:
master
master-ubi
master-fips
Merge requests that can trigger Package and QA, can trigger a FIPS package and a Reference Architecture test pipeline. The base image used for the trigger is Ubuntu 20.04 FIPS:
e2e:test-on-omnibus-ee
job, if not already triggered.gitlab-omnibus-mirror
child pipeline, manually trigger Trigger:package:fips
.RAT:FIPS
job.RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
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