Reference Guide

Secure Operation of Crypto-C ME 23
RSA BSAFE Crypto-C Micro Edition 4.1 Security Policy
Level 1
• When using GCM feedback mode for symmetric encryption, the authentication
tag length and authenticated data length may be specified as input parameters, but
the Initialization Vector (IV) must not be specified. It must be generated
internally.
• In the case where the module is powered down, a new key must be used for AES
GCM encryption/decryption.
• For Password-based Key Derivation, the following restrictions apply:
– Keys generated using PBKDF2 shall only be used in data storage
applications.
– The minimum password length is 14 characters, which has a strength of
approximately 112 bits, assuming a randomly selected password using the
extended ASCII printable character set is used.
For random passwords (that is, a string of characters from a given set of
characters in which each character is equally likely to be selected), the
strength of the password is given by:
S=L*(log N/log 2) where N is the
number of possible characters (for example, for the ASCII printable character
set
N = 95, for the extended ASCII printable character set N = 218) and L
is the number of characters. A password of the strength
S can be guessed at
random with the probability of 1 in 2
S
.
– The minimum length of the randomly-generated portion of the salt is 16 bytes.
– The iteration count is as large as possible, with a minimum of 1000 iterations
recommended.
– The maximum key length is
(2
32
-1)*b, where b is the digest size of the
message digest function.
– Derived keys can be used as specified in NIST Special Publication 800-132,
Section 5.4, options 1 and 2.
3.2 Roles
If a user of Crypto-C ME needs to operate the toolkit in different roles, then the user
must ensure all instantiated cryptographic objects are destroyed before changing from
the Crypto User role to the Crypto Officer role, or unexpected results could occur.
The following table lists the roles a user can operate in.
Table 5 Crypto-C ME Roles
Role Description
R_FIPS140_ROLE_OFFICER
An operator assuming the Crypto Officer role can call any Crypto-C ME
function. The complete list of the functionality available to the Crypto
Officer is outlined in “Services” on page 27.
R_FIPS140_ROLE_USER
An operator assuming the Crypto User role can use the entire Crypto-C ME
API except for
R_PROV_FIPS140_self_test_full(), which is reserved
for the Crypto Officer. The complete list of Crypto-C ME functions is
outlined in “Services” on page 27.