WPA3 SAE and FIPS 140-3

[achtol]

On 7/1/22 22:38, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Jul 2022, achtol wrote:
>>
>> Does this mean that WPA3 is incompatible with FIPS? That would be 
>> puzzling, when the arguably less secure WPA2 does not pose such a 
>> problem (only constraints on the length of SSID/passphrases).
>>
>> Or, can it be claimed that these operations do not fulfill a security 
>> function? In which case, I believe, using a non-FIPS-approved 
>> algorithm is permitted.
>
> Regardless of the reasoning employed (and hopefully it is the latter), 
> your FIPS 140-3 crypto library is not going to be very helpful since 
> it will refuse to work.  You would then need to find the necessary 
> crypto algorithms independent of that library and add them in a 
> non-conflicting way, much as hostapd/wpa_supplicant include a private 
> implementation of MD5.
>
> Bob
That's right. My plan would be to throw in custom implementations of 
these algorithms, for these two functions only. But to do that I need a 
justification for these exceptions, so that the FIPS status of the whole 
system is not questioned.