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Configuring Red Hat build of OpenJDK 11 on RHEL with FIPS

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Red Hat build of OpenJDK 11

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Abstract

Red Hat build of OpenJDK is a Red Hat offering on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. The Configuring Red Hat build of OpenJDK 11 on RHEL with FIPS guide provides an overview of FIPS and explains how to enable and configure Red Hat build of OpenJDK with FIPS.

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Chapter 1. Introduction to Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS)

The Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) provides guidelines and requirements for improving security and interoperability across computer systems and networks. The FIPS 140-2 and 140-3 series apply to cryptographic modules at both the hardware and software levels. The National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States implements a cryptographic module validation program with searchable lists of both in-process and approved cryptographic modules.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) brings an integrated framework to enable FIPS 140-2 compliance system-wide. When operating under FIPS mode, software packages using cryptographic libraries are self-configured according to the global policy. Most of the packages provide a way to change the default alignment behavior for compatibility or other needs.

Red Hat build of OpenJDK 11 is a FIPS policy-aware package.

Additional resources

Chapter 2. Configure Red Hat build of OpenJDK 11 in FIPS mode

Red Hat build of OpenJDK 11 checks if the FIPS mode is enabled in the system at startup. If yes, it self-configures FIPS according to the global policy. This is the default behavior since RHEL 8.3. Previous RHEL 8 releases require the com.redhat.fips system property set to true as a JVM argument. For example, -Dcom.redhat.fips=true.

Note

If FIPS mode is enabled in the system while a JVM instance is running, the instance needs to be restarted for changes to take effect.

For more information on how to enable FIPS mode, see Switching the system to FIPS mode.

You can configure Red Hat build of OpenJDK 11 to bypass the global FIPS alignment. For example, you might want to enable FIPS compliance through a Hardware Security Module (HSM) instead of the scheme provided by Red Hat build of OpenJDK.

Following are the FIPS properties for Red Hat build of OpenJDK 11:

  • security.useSystemPropertiesFile

    • Security property located at $JAVA_HOME/conf/security/java.security or in the file directed to java.security.properties.
    • Privileged access is required to modify the value in the default java.security file.
    • Persistent configuration.
    • When set to false, both the global FIPS and the crypto-policies alignment are disabled. By default, it is set to true.

  • java.security.disableSystemPropertiesFile

    • System property passed to the JVM as an argument. For example, -Djava.security.disableSystemPropertiesFile=true.
    • Non-privileged access is enough.
    • Non-persistent configuration.
    • When set to true, both the global FIPS and the crypto-policies alignment are disabled; generating the same effect than a security.useSystemPropertiesFile=false security property. If both properties are set to different behaviors, java.security.disableSystemPropertiesFile overrides. By default, it is set to false.

  • com.redhat.fips

    • System property passed to a JVM as an argument. For example, -Dcom.redhat.fips=false.
    • Non-privileged access is enough.
    • Non-persistent configuration.
    • When set to false, disables the FIPS alignment while still applying the global crypto-policies. If any of the previous properties is set to disable the crypto-policies alignment, this property has no effect. In other words, crypto-policies is a prerequisite for FIPS alignment. By default, it is set to true.

Chapter 3. Default FIPS configurations in Red Hat build of OpenJDK 11

Security providers

The Red Hat build of OpenJDK security policy is controled by the global java security policy file. You can find the java security policy file at $JRE_HOME/lib/security/java.security.

With FIPS mode enabled, Red Hat build of OpenJDK replaces the installed security providers with the following ones (in descending priority order):

SunPKCS11-NSS-FIPS

  • Initialized with a Network Security Services (NSS) Software Token (PKCS#11 backend). The NSS Software Token is configured as follows:

    • name = NSS-FIPS
    • nssLibraryDirectory = /usr/lib64
    • nssSecmodDirectory = /etc/pki/nssdb
    • nssDbMode = readOnly
    • nssModule = fips
  • The NSS library implements a FIPS-compliant Software Token. Also, FIPS policy-aware in RHEL.
SUN
  • For X.509 certificates support only. Make sure that your application is not using other cryptographic algorithms from this provider. For example, MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-256", Security.getProvider("SUN")) would work but lead to a non-FIPS compliant MessageDigest service.
SunEC
  • For SunPKCS11 auxiliary helpers only. Make sure that your application is not explicitly using this provider.
SunJSSE
  • Initialized with the SunPKCS11-NSS-FIPS provider for all cryptographic primitives required by the TLS engine, including key derivation.

Crypto-policies

With FIPS mode enabled, Red Hat build of OpenJDK takes configuration values of cryptographic algorithms from global crypto-policies. You can find these values at /etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/java.config. You can use the update-crypto-policies tooling from RHEL to manage crypto-policies in a consistent way.

Note

A crypto-policies approved algorithm might not be usable in Red Hat build of OpenJDK’s FIPS mode. This occurs when a FIPS-compliant implementation is not available in the NSS library or when it is not supported in Red Hat build of OpenJDK’s SunPKCS11 security provider.

Trust Anchor certificates

Red Hat build of OpenJDK uses the global Trust Anchor certificates repository when in FIPS mode. You can locate this repository at /etc/pki/java/cacerts. Use the update-ca-trust tooling from RHEL to manage certificates in a consistent way.

Key store

With FIPS mode, Red Hat build of OpenJDK uses the NSS DB as a read-only PKCS#11 store for keys. As a result, the keystore.type security property is set to PKCS11. You can locate the NSS DB repository at /etc/pki/nssdb. Use the modutil tooling in RHEL to manage NSS DB keys.

SunPKCS11 provider configuration attributes

The SunPKCS11 provider includes configuration attributes that enhance the usage of native resources, such as key objects. The SunPKCS11 provider must use its native resources to work with native PKCS11 libraries.

Table 3.1. SunPKCS11 provider configuration attributes
AttributeTypeDescription

destroyTokenAfterLogout

boolean

Defaults to false. If set to true, when an application invokes the logout() method of the SunPKCS11 provider instance, the underlying token object is deleted by the SunPKCS11 provider instance and resources are released. This renders the SunPKCS11 provider unusable after execution of logout() method calls, so do not add the PKCS11 to the system provider list.

cleaner.shortInterval

integer

Defaults to 2000 milliseconds (ms). The attribute defines the frequency that a cleaner thread removes no-longer-needed native PKCS11 references from the clearing queue to free native memory.

Note: The cleaner thread switches to use the cleaner.longInterval attribute value if no native PKCS11 references exist in the clearing queue and the cleaner thread attempts the removal process on the queue more than 200 times.

cleaner.longInterval

integer

Defaults to 60000 milliseconds (ms). The attribute defines the frequency that a cleaner thread checks the clearing queue for native PKCS11 references during non-busy periods of time.

Note: The cleaner thread switches to use the cleaner.shortInterval attribute value when the thread detects native PKCS11 references in the clearing queue.

Revised on 2024-05-09 16:46:03 UTC

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