Chapter 6. Changes in Go Toolset in Red Hat Developer Tools 2018.4

Go programs built with Go Toolset are FIPS compliant.

The cryptographic library available in Go Toolset has been changed to link against the OpenSSL library version 1.0.2. As a consequence, the Go cryptographic libraries are FIPS compliant. As a result, programs built with this version of Go Toolset are FIPS compliant, too. The Go crypto library will call into OpenSSL for FIPS compliance if the host system is also configured in FIPS mode.

The optional compiler flag -tags no_openssl can be used to disable this and build with pure Go cryptography. For example, during a normal build using this toolchain, invoke the Go tool in the following way to disable FIPS compliance and dynamically linking against OpenSSL:

go build -tags no_openssl

$ go build -tags no_openssl