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FIPS compliance
FIPS is short for "Federal Information Processing Standard", a document which defines certain security practices for a "cryptographic module" (CM). It aims to ensure a certain security floor is met by vendors selling products to U.S. Federal institutions.
WARNING: You can build a FIPS-compliant instance of GitLab, but not all features are included. A FIPS-compliant instance must be configured following the FIPS install instructions exactly.
There are two current FIPS standards: 140-2 and 140-3. At GitLab we usually mean FIPS 140-2.
Current status
GitLab is actively working towards FIPS compliance. Progress on this initiative can be tracked with this FIPS compliance Epic.
FIPS compliance at GitLab
To be compliant, all components (GitLab itself, Gitaly, etc) must be compliant, along with the communication between those components, and any storage used by them. Where functionality cannot be brought into compliance, it must be disabled when FIPS mode is enabled.
Leveraged Cryptographic modules
Cryptographic module name | CMVP number | Instance type | Software component used |
---|---|---|---|
Ubuntu 20.04 AWS Kernel Crypto API Cryptographic Module | 4132 | EC2 | Linux kernel |
Ubuntu 20.04 OpenSSL Cryptographic Module | 3966 | EC2 | Gitaly, Rails (Puma/Sidekiq) |
Ubuntu 20.04 Libgcrypt Cryptographic Module | 3902 | EC2 instances | gpg , sshd |
Amazon Linux 2 Kernel Crypto API Cryptographic Module | 3709 | EKS nodes | Linux kernel |
Amazon Linux 2 OpenSSL Cryptographic Module | 3553 | EKS nodes | NGINX |
RedHat Enterprise Linux 8 OpenSSL Cryptographic Module | 4271 | EKS nodes | UBI containers: Workhorse, Pages, Container Registry, Rails (Puma/Sidekiq), Security Analyzers |
RedHat Enterprise Linux 8 Libgcrypt Cryptographic Module | 3784 | EKS nodes | UBI containers: GitLab Shell, gpg |
Supported Operating Systems
The supported hybrid platforms are:
- Omnibus GitLab: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
- Cloud Native GitLab: Amazon Linux 2 (EKS)
Unsupported features in FIPS mode
Some GitLab features may not work when FIPS mode is enabled. The following features are known to not work in FIPS mode. However, there may be additional features not listed here that also do not work properly in FIPS mode:
- Container Scanning support for scanning images in repositories that require authentication.
- Code Quality does not support operating in FIPS-compliant mode.
- Dependency scanning support for Gradle.
- Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) does not support operating in FIPS-compliant mode.
- License compliance.
- Solutions for vulnerabilities for yarn projects.
- Static Application Security Testing (SAST) supports a reduced set of analyzers when operating in FIPS-compliant mode.
- Advanced Search is currently not included in FIPS mode. It must not be enabled in order to be FIPS-compliant.
- Gravatar or Libravatar-based profile images are not FIPS-compliant.
Additionally, these package repositories are disabled in FIPS mode:
FIPS validation at GitLab
Unlike FIPS compliance, FIPS validation is a formal declaration of compliance by an accredited auditor. The requirements needed to pass the audit are the same as for FIPS compliance.
A list of FIPS-validated modules can be found at the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) cryptographic module validation program.
Install GitLab with FIPS compliance
This guide is specifically for public users or GitLab team members with a requirement to run a production instance of GitLab that is FIPS compliant. This guide outlines a hybrid deployment using elements from both Omnibus and our Cloud Native GitLab installations.
Prerequisites
- Amazon Web Services account. Our first target environment is running on AWS, and uses other FIPS Compliant AWS resources.
- Ability to run Ubuntu 20.04 machines for GitLab. Our first target environment uses the hybrid architecture.
Set up a FIPS-enabled cluster
You can use the GitLab Environment Toolkit to spin up a FIPS-enabled cluster for development and testing. As mentioned in the prerequisites, these instructions use Amazon Web Services (AWS) because that is the first target environment.
Set up your environment
To get started, your AWS account must subscribe to a FIPS-enabled Amazon Machine Image (AMI) in the AWS Marketplace console.
This example assumes that the Ubuntu Pro 20.04 FIPS LTS
AMI by
Canonical Group Limited
has been added your account. This operating
system is used for virtual machines running in Amazon EC2.
Omnibus
The simplest way to get a FIPS-enabled GitLab cluster is to use an Omnibus reference architecture. See the GET Quick Start Guide for more details. The following instructions build on the Quick Start and are also necessary for Cloud Native Hybrid installations.
Terraform: Use a FIPS AMI
-
Follow the guide to set up Terraform and Ansible.
-
After step 2b, create a
data.tf
in your environment (for example,gitlab-environment-toolkit/terraform/environments/gitlab-10k/inventory/data.tf
):data "aws_ami" "ubuntu_20_04_fips" { count = 1 most_recent = true filter { name = "name" values = ["ubuntu-pro-fips-server/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-focal-20.04-amd64-pro-fips-server-*"] } filter { name = "virtualization-type" values = ["hvm"] } owners = ["aws-marketplace"] }
-
Add the custom
ami_id
to use this AMI inenvironment.tf
. For example, ingitlab-environment-toolkit/terraform/environments/gitlab-10k/inventory/environment.tf
:module "gitlab_ref_arch_aws" { source = "../../modules/gitlab_ref_arch_aws" prefix = var.prefix ami_id = data.aws_ami.ubuntu_20_04_fips[0].id ...
NOTE:
GET does not allow the AMI to change on EC2 instances after it has
been deployed via terraform apply
. Since an AMI change would tear down
an instance, this would result in data loss: not only would disks be
destroyed, but also GitLab secrets would be lost. There is a Terraform lifecycle rule
to ignore AMI changes.
Ansible: Specify the FIPS Omnibus builds
The standard Omnibus GitLab releases build their own OpenSSL library, which is
not FIPS-validated. However, we have nightly builds that create Omnibus packages
that link against the operating system's OpenSSL library. To use this package,
update the gitlab_edition
and gitlab_repo_script_url
fields in the Ansible
vars.yml
. For example, you might modify
gitlab-environment-toolkit/ansible/environments/gitlab-10k/inventory/vars.yml
in this way:
all:
vars:
...
gitlab_repo_script_url: "https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/gitlab/gitlab-fips/script.deb.sh"
gitlab_edition: "gitlab-fips"
Cloud Native Hybrid
A Cloud Native Hybrid install uses both Omnibus and Cloud Native GitLab (CNG) images. The previous instructions cover the Omnibus part, but two additional steps are needed to enable FIPS in CNG:
- Use a custom Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) AMI.
- Use GitLab containers built with RedHat's Universal Base Image (UBI).
Build a custom EKS AMI
Because Amazon does not yet publish a FIPS-enabled AMI, you have to build one yourself with Packer.
Amazon publishes the following Git repositories with information about custom EKS AMIs:
This GitHub pull request makes it possible to create an Amazon Linux 2 EKS AMI with FIPS enabled for Kubernetes v1.21. To build an image:
-
Run the following:
git clone https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-eks-ami cd amazon-eks-ami git fetch origin pull/898/head:fips-ami git checkout fips-ami AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1 make 1.21-fips # Be sure to set the region accordingly
If you are using a different version of Kubernetes, adjust the make
command and Makefile
accordingly.
When the AMI build is done, a new AMI should be created with a message such as the following:
==> Builds finished. The artifacts of successful builds are:
--> amazon-ebs: AMIs were created:
us-west-2: ami-0a25e760cd00b027e
In this example, the AMI ID is ami-0a25e760cd00b027e
, but your value may
be different.
Building a RHEL-based system with FIPS enabled should be possible, but there is an outstanding issue preventing the Packer build from completing.
Terraform: Use a custom EKS AMI
Now you can set the custom EKS AMI.
-
In
environment.tf
, addeks_ami_id = var.eks_ami_id
so you can pass this variable to the AWS reference architecture module. For example, ingitlab-environment-toolkit/terraform/environments/gitlab-10k/inventory/environment.tf
:module "gitlab_ref_arch_aws" { source = "../../modules/gitlab_ref_arch_aws" prefix = var.prefix ami_id = data.aws_ami.ubuntu_20_04_fips[0].id eks_ami_id = var.eks_ami_id ....
-
In
variables.tf
, define aeks_ami_id
with the AMI ID in the previous step:variable "eks_ami_id" { default = "ami-0a25e760cd00b027e" }
Ansible: Use UBI images
CNG uses a Helm Chart to manage which container images to deploy. By default, GET deploys the latest released versions that use Debian-based containers.
To switch to UBI-based containers, edit the Ansible vars.yml
to use custom
Charts variables:
all:
vars:
...
gitlab_charts_custom_config_file: '/path/to/gitlab-environment-toolkit/ansible/environments/gitlab-10k/inventory/charts.yml'
Now create charts.yml
in the location specified above and specify tags with a -fips
suffix. For example:
global:
image:
pullPolicy: Always
certificates:
image:
tag: master-fips
kubectl:
image:
tag: master-fips
gitlab:
gitaly:
image:
tag: master-fips
gitlab-exporter:
image:
tag: master-fips
gitlab-shell:
image:
tag: main-fips # The default branch is main, not master
gitlab-mailroom:
image:
tag: master-fips
gitlab-pages:
image:
tag: master-fips
migrations:
image:
tag: master-fips
sidekiq:
image:
tag: master-fips
toolbox:
image:
tag: master-fips
webservice:
image:
tag: master-fips
workhorse:
tag: master-fips
nginx-ingress:
controller:
image:
repository: registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/cloud-native/charts/gitlab-ingress-nginx/controller
tag: v1.2.1-fips
pullPolicy: Always
digest: sha256:c4222b7ab3836b9be2a7649cff4b2e6ead34286dfdf3a7b04eb34fdd3abb0334
The above example shows a FIPS-enabled nginx-ingress
image.
See our Charts documentation on FIPS for more details.
You can also use release tags, but the versioning is tricky because each component may use its own versioning scheme. For example, for GitLab v15.2:
global:
certificates:
image:
tag: 20211220-r0-fips
kubectl:
image:
tag: 1.18.20-fips
gitlab:
gitaly:
image:
tag: v15.2.0-fips
gitlab-exporter:
image:
tag: 11.17.1-fips
gitlab-shell:
image:
tag: v14.9.0-fips
gitlab-mailroom:
image:
tag: v15.2.0-fips
gitlab-pages:
image:
tag: v1.61.0-fips
migrations:
image:
tag: v15.2.0-fips
sidekiq:
image:
tag: v15.2.0-fips
toolbox:
image:
tag: v15.2.0-fips
webservice:
image:
tag: v15.2.0-fips
workhorse:
tag: v15.2.0-fips
FIPS Performance Benchmarking
The Quality Engineering Enablement team assists these efforts by checking if FIPS-enabled environments perform well compared to non-FIPS environments.
Testing shows an impact in some places, such as Gitaly SSL, but it's not large enough to impact customers.
You can find more information on FIPS performance benchmarking in the following issue:
Setting up a FIPS-enabled development environment
The simplest approach is to set up a virtual machine running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.
Red Hat provide free licenses to developers, and permit the CD image to be downloaded from the Red Hat developer's portal. Registration is required.
After the virtual machine is set up, you can follow the GDK
installation instructions, including the advanced instructions for RHEL.
Note that asdf
is not used for dependency management because it's essential to
use the RedHat-provided Go compiler and other system dependencies.
Enable FIPS mode
After GDK and its dependencies are installed, run this command (as root) and restart the virtual machine:
fips-mode-setup --enable
You can check whether it's taken effect by running:
fips-mode-setup --check
In this environment, OpenSSL refuses to perform cryptographic operations forbidden by the FIPS standards. This enables you to reproduce FIPS-related bugs, and validate fixes.
You should be able to open a web browser inside the virtual machine and log in to the GitLab instance.
You can disable FIPS mode again by running this command, then restarting the virtual machine:
fips-mode-setup --disable
Detect FIPS enablement in code
You can query Gitlab::FIPS
in Ruby code to determine if the instance is FIPS-enabled:
def default_min_key_size(name)
if Gitlab::FIPS.enabled?
Gitlab::SSHPublicKey.supported_sizes(name).select(&:positive?).min || -1
else
0
end
end
Nightly Omnibus FIPS builds
The Distribution team has created nightly FIPS Omnibus builds. These GitLab builds are compiled to use the system OpenSSL instead of the Omnibus-embedded version of OpenSSL.
See the section on how FIPS builds are created.
Runner
See the documentation on installing a FIPS-compliant GitLab Runner.
Verify FIPS
The following sections describe ways you can verify if FIPS is enabled.
Kernel
$ cat /proc/sys/crypto/fips_enabled
1
Ruby (Omnibus images)
$ /opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'openssl'; OpenSSL.fips_mode
=> true
Ruby (CNG images)
$ irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'openssl'; OpenSSL.fips_mode
=> true
Go
Google maintains a dev.boringcrypto
branch in the Golang compiler
that makes it possible to statically link BoringSSL, a FIPS-validated module forked from OpenSSL.
However, BoringSSL is not intended for public use.
We use golang-fips
, a fork of the dev.boringcrypto
branch to build Go programs that
dynamically link OpenSSL via dlopen
. This has several advantages:
- Using a FIPS-validated, system OpenSSL is straightforward.
- This is the source code used by Red Hat's go-toolset package.
- Unlike go-toolset, this fork appears to keep up with the latest Go releases.
However, cgo must be enabled via CGO_ENABLED=1
for this to work. There
is a performance hit when calling into C code.
Projects that are compiled with golang-fips
on Linux x86 automatically
get built the crypto routines that use OpenSSL. While the boringcrypto
build tag is automatically present, no extra build tags are actually
needed. There are specific build tags
that disable these crypto hooks.
We can check whether a given binary is using OpenSSL via go tool nm
and look for symbols named Cfunc__goboringcrypto
. For example:
$ go tool nm nginx-ingress-controller | grep Cfunc__goboringcrypto | tail
2a0b650 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA384_Final
2a0b658 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA384_Init
2a0b660 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA384_Update
2a0b668 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA512_Final
2a0b670 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA512_Init
2a0b678 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_SHA512_Update
2a0b680 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_internal_ECDSA_sign
2a0b688 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_internal_ECDSA_verify
2a0b690 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_internal_ERR_error_string_n
2a0b698 D crypto/internal/boring._cgo_71ae3cd1ca33_Cfunc__goboringcrypto_internal_ERR_get_error
In addition, LabKit contains routines to check whether FIPS is enabled.
How FIPS builds are created
Many GitLab projects (for example: Gitaly, GitLab Pages) have
standardized on using FIPS_MODE=1 make
to build FIPS binaries locally.
Omnibus
The Omnibus FIPS builds are triggered with the USE_SYSTEM_SSL
environment variable set to true
. When this environment variable is
set, the Omnibus recipes dependencies such as curl
, NGINX, and libgit2
will link against the system OpenSSL. OpenSSL will NOT be included in
the Omnibus build.
The Omnibus builds are created using container images that use the golang-fips
compiler. For
example, this job created
the registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-omnibus-builder/centos_8_fips:3.3.1
image used to
build packages for RHEL 8.
Add a new FIPS build for another Linux distribution
First, you need to make sure there is an Omnibus builder image for the desired Linux distribution. The images used to build Omnibus packages are created with Omnibus Builder images.
Review this merge request. A new image can be added by:
- Adding CI jobs with the
_fips
suffix (for example:ubuntu_18.04_fips
). - Making sure the
Dockerfile
usesSnippets.new(fips: fips).populate
instead ofSnippets.new.populate
.
After this image has been tagged, add a new CI job to Omnibus GitLab.
Cloud Native GitLab (CNG)
The Cloud Native GitLab CI pipeline generates images using several base images:
UBI images ship with the same OpenSSL package as those used by RHEL. This makes it possible to build FIPS-compliant binaries without needing RHEL. Note that RHEL 8.2 ships a FIPS-validated OpenSSL, but 8.5 is in review for FIPS validation.
This merge request
introduces a FIPS pipeline for CNG images. Images tagged for FIPS have the -fips
suffix. For example,
the webservice
container has the following tags:
master
master-ubi8
master-fips
Testing merge requests with a FIPS pipeline
Merge requests that can trigger Package and QA, can trigger a FIPS package and a Reference Architecture test pipeline. The base image used for the trigger is Ubuntu 20.04 FIPS:
- Trigger
e2e:package-and-test
job, if not already triggered. - On the
gitlab-omnibus-mirror
child pipeline, manually triggerTrigger:package:fips
. - When the package job is complete, manually trigger the
RAT:FIPS
job.