1장. Switching RHEL to FIPS mode

To ensure that your RHEL system generates and uses all cryptographic keys only with FIPS-approved algorithms, you must switch RHEL to FIPS mode.

To enable FIPS mode, start the installation in FIPS mode. This avoids cryptographic key material regeneration and compliance reevaluation when converting deployed systems. Additionally, components that change their algorithm choices based on FIPS mode choose the correct algorithms. For example, LUKS disk encryption uses the PBKDF2 key derivation function (KDF) during installation in FIPS mode. Otherwise, it chooses the non-FIPS-compliant Argon2 KDF. Therefore, a non-FIPS installation with disk encryption is either not compliant or potentially unbootable when switched to FIPS mode after installation.

To operate a FIPS-compliant system, create all cryptographic key material in FIPS mode. Furthermore, the cryptographic key material must never leave the FIPS environment unless it is securely wrapped and never unwrapped in non-FIPS environments.

The fips=1 boot option on the kernel command line determines whether FIPS mode is enabled. The system-wide cryptographic policy automatically follows this setting unless you explicitly set it by using the update-crypto-policies --set FIPS command. Systems with a separate partition for /boot additionally require a boot=UUID=<uuid-of-boot-disk> kernel command line argument. The installation program performs the required changes when started in FIPS mode.

Enforcement of restrictions required in FIPS mode depends on the contents of the /proc/sys/crypto/fips_enabled file. If the file contains 1, RHEL core cryptographic components switch to mode, in which they use only FIPS-approved implementations of cryptographic algorithms. If /proc/sys/crypto/fips_enabled contains 0, the cryptographic components do not enable their FIPS mode.

The FIPS system-wide cryptographic policy helps configure higher-level restrictions. Communication protocols supporting cryptographic agility do not announce ciphers that the system refuses when selected. For example, the ChaCha20 algorithm is not FIPS-approved. The FIPS cryptographic policy ensures that TLS servers and clients do not announce the TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 TLS cipher suite because any attempt to use it fails.

If you operate RHEL in FIPS mode and use an application providing its own FIPS-mode-related configuration options, ignore these options and the corresponding application guidance. The system running in FIPS mode and the system-wide cryptographic policies enforce only FIPS-compliant cryptography. For example, the Node.js --enable-fips and --force-fips options are not supported. Do not use these options. On RHEL, Node.js follows the system FIPS mode and uses FIPS-certified OpenSSL libraries provided by RHEL. Using these options causes Node.js to exit with an explanatory error message, regardless of whether the system is running in FIPS mode.

Because RHEL introduced OpenSSL FIPS indicators before the OpenSSL upstream did, and both designs differ, the indicators might change in a future minor version of RHEL 10. After the potential adoption of the upstream API, the RHEL 10.0 indicators might return an error message "unsupported" instead of a result. See the OpenSSL FIPS Indicators GitHub document for details.