Xuelei Fan's Blog

NIST'S Policy on Hash Functions March 15, 2006: The SHA-2 family of hash functions (i.e., SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512) may be used by Federal agencies for all applications using secure hash algorithms. Federal agencies should stop using SHA-1 for digital signatures, digital time stamping and other applications that require collision resistance as soon as practical, and must use the SHA-2 family of hash functions for these applications after 2010. After 2010, Federal agencies may use SHA-1 only for the following applications: hash-based message authentication codes (HMACs); key derivation functions (KDFs); and random number generators (RNGs). Regardless of use, NIST encourages application and protocol designers to use the SHA-2 family of hash functions for all new applications and protocols. TLS specifics of hash functions MAC constructionsA number of operations in the TLS record and handshake layer require a keyed Message Authentication Code (MAC) to protect mes...

In the  Java™ 6 Security Enhancements , it says that "The SunJSSE provider now supports an experimental FIPS 140 compliant mode.  When enabled and used in combination with the SunPKCS11 provider and an appropriate FIPS 140 certified PKCS#11 token, SunJSSE is FIPS 140 compliant."  Except that, we cannot find any more document on how to enable FIPS mode and how the FIPS mode works with SunJSSE. Normally, developers could a few hints from Andreas blog,.  The Java PKCS#11 Provider and NSS , althought it is far from enough to understand the FIPS mode of SunJSSE. The following is a unpublished document, hope it helps. F IPS 140 Compliant Mode for SunJSSE In Sun's Java SE implementation version 6 or later, the SunJSSE provider, which contains the SSL/TLS implementation, can be configured to operate in a FIPS 140 compliant mode instead of its default mode. This document describes the FIPS 140 compliant mode (subsequently called "FIPS mode"). C onfiguring SunJ...