Amazon Corretto Crypto Provider

The Amazon Corretto Crypto Provider (ACCP) is a collection of high-performance cryptographic implementations exposed via the standard JCA/JCE interfaces. This means that it can be used as a drop in replacement for many different Java applications. (Differences from the default OpenJDK implementations are documented here.) As of 2.0.0, algorithms exposed by ACCP are primarily backed by AWS-LC's implementations.

Security issue notifications

Build Status

Build Name	main branch
Linux x86_64
Linux aarch64

Supported Algorithms

MessageDigest algorithms:

• SHA-512
• SHA-384
• SHA-256
• SHA-1
• MD5

Mac algorithms:

• HmacSHA512
• HmacSHA384
• HmacSHA256
• HmacSHA1
• HmacMD5

Cipher algorithms:

• AES/GCM/NoPadding
• AES_128/GCM/NoPadding
• AES_256/GCM/NoPadding
• AES/KWP/NoPadding
• AES/XTS/NoPadding
• RSA/ECB/NoPadding
• RSA/ECB/PKCS1Padding
• RSA/ECB/OAEPPadding
• RSA/ECB/OAEPWithSHA-1AndMGF1Padding

Signature algorithms:

• SHA1withRSA
• SHA224withRSA
• SHA256withRSA
• SHA384withRSA
• SHA512withRSA
• NONEwithECDSA
• SHA1withECDSA
• SHA1withECDSAinP1363Format
• SHA224withECDSA
• SHA224withECDSAinP1363Format
• SHA256withECDSA
• SHA256withECDSAinP1363Format
• SHA384withECDSA
• SHA384withECDSAinP1363Format
• SHA512withECDSA
• SHA512withECDSAinP1363Format
• RSASSA-PSS

KeyPairGenerator:

• EC
• RSA

KeyGenerator:

• AES

KeyAgreement:

• ECDH

SecretKeyFactory:

• HkdfWithHmacSHA1
• HkdfWithHmacSHA256
• HkdfWithHmacSHA384
• HkdfWithHmacSHA512

SecureRandom:

• ACCP's SecureRandom uses AWS-LC's DRBG implementation, which is described here and here. Please refer to system properties for more information.

KeyFactory:

• EC
• RSA

AlgorithmParameters:

• EC. Please refer to system properties for more information.

Notes on ACCP-FIPS

ACCP-FIPS is a variation of ACCP which uses AWS-LC-FIPS 2.x as its cryptographic module. This version of AWS-LC-FIPS has completed FIPS validation testing by an accredited lab and has been submitted to NIST for certification. Refer to the NIST Cryptographic Module Validation Program's Modules In Progress List for the latest status of the AWS-LC Cryptographic Module. We will also update our release notes and documentation to reflect any changes in FIPS certification status. We provide ACCP-FIPS for experimentation and performance testing in the interim.

Version 2.3.0 is the first release of ACCP-FIPS. The Maven coordinates for ACCP-FIPS are the same as ACCP with one difference that ACCP-FIPS's artifact ID is AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider-FIPS.

Notable differences between ACCP and ACCP-FIPS:

• ACCP uses the latest release of AWS-LC, whereas, ACCP-FIPS uses the fips-2022-11-02 branch of AWS-LC.
• ACCP-FIPS builds AWS-LC in FIPS mode by passing -DFIPS=1 when configuring AWS-LC's build.
• In FIPS-mode, RSA keys are limited to 2048, 3072, or 4096 bits in size with public exponent F4.
• ACCP-FIPS does not register SecureRandom by default due to the performance of AWS-LC’s entropy source in FIPS-mode. A system property is available to register SecureRandom from AWS-LC if needed, and the performance differences are described in further detail under the description of that property.
• Due to the fact that an older branch of AWS-LC is used in FIPS-mode, there will be performance differences between ACCP and ACCP-FIPS. We highly recommend performing detailed performance testing of your application if you choose to experiment with ACCP-FIPS.

ACCP-FIPS is only supported on the following platforms:

Platfrom	FIPS support since version
linux-x86_64	2.3.0
linux-aarch_64	2.3.0

Compatibility & Requirements

ACCP has the following requirements:

• JDK8 or newer (This includes both OracleJDK and Amazon Corretto)
• Linux (x86-64 or arm64) or MacOs running on x86_64 (also known as x64 or AMD64)

ACCP comes bundled with AWS-lC's libcrypto.so, so it is not neccessery to install AWS-LC on the host or container where you run your application.

If ACCP is used/installed on a system it does not support, it will disable itself and the JVM will behave as if ACCP weren't installed at all.

Using the provider

Installation

Installing via Maven or Gradle is the easiest way to get ACCP and ensure you will always have the most recent version. We strongly recommend you always pull in the latest version for best performance and bug-fixes.

Whether you're using Maven, Gradle, or some other build system that also pulls packages from Maven Central, it's important to specify a classifier, otherwise, one would get an empty package. The possible classifiers are as follows:

Classifier	Support since version	FIPS support since version
linux-x86_64	1.0.0	2.3.0
linux-aarch_64	2.0.0	2.3.0
osx-x86_64	2.3.2	Not supported
osx-aarch_64	2.3.3	Not supported

Regardless of how you acquire ACCP (Maven, manual build, etc.) you will still need to follow the guidance in the Configuration section to enable ACCP in your application.

Maven

Add the following to your pom.xml or wherever you configure your Maven dependencies. This will instruct it to use the latest 2.x version of ACCP for Linux x86-64 platform. For more information, please see VERSIONING.rst.

<dependency>
  <groupId>software.amazon.cryptools</groupId>
  <artifactId>AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider</artifactId>
  <version>[2.0, 3.0)</version>
  <classifier>linux-x86_64</classifier>
</dependency>

The artifactId for FIPS builds is AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider-FIPS.

ACCP artifacts on Maven can be verified using the following PGP keys:

ACCP Version	PGP Key ID	Key Server
1.x	6F189046CEE0B2C1	keyserver.ubuntu.com
2.x	5EFEEFE6BD0BD916	keyserver.ubuntu.com

Gradle

Add the following to your build.gradle file. If you already have a dependencies block in your build.gradle, you can add the ACCP line to your existing block. For more information, please see VERSIONING.rst.

dependencies {
    implementation 'software.amazon.cryptools:AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider:2.+:linux-x86_64'
}

For Gradle builds, the os-detector plugin could be used so that one does not have to explicitly specify the platform. Here is an example.

Manual

Manual installation requires acquiring the provider and adding it to your classpath. You can either download a prebuilt version of the provider or build it yourself. Adding a jar to your classpath is highly application and build-system dependant and we cannot provide specific guidance.

Download from GitHub releases

The most recent version of our provider will always be on our official releases page.

Build it yourself

Please be aware that if you build the provider yourself then it will NOT work with OracleJDK. The OracleJDK requires that JCA providers be cryptographically signed by a trusted certificate. The JARs we publish via Maven and our official releases are signed by our private key, but yours will not be.

Building this provider requires a 64 bit Linux or MacOS build system with the following prerequisites installed:

• OpenJDK 10 or newer
• cmake 3.8 or newer
• C++ build chain
• lcov for coverage metrics
• gcovr for reporting coverage metrics in CodeBuild

1. Download the repository via git clone --recurse-submodules
2. Run ./gradlew release
3. The resulting jar is in build/lib

Repackaging ACCP into Uber/Fat Jars

Please be aware that repackaging ACCP's published Jar files from Maven into your own "uber" or "fat" JAR file may not work on OracleJDK. The OracleJDK requires that JCE providers be cryptographically signed by a trusted certificate. The JARs we publish via Maven and our official releases are signed by our private key, but yours will not be.

Depending on how ACCP is repackaged, ACCP's existing signature may be invalidated, and you may receive one of the following exceptions:

• java.util.jar.JarException: The JCE Provider file is not signed.
• java.lang.SecurityException: JCE cannot authenticate the provider
• java.security.NoSuchProviderException: JCE cannot authenticate the provider

If you receive one of these exceptions, then you will need to evaluate if any of the following options will work for your application and environment:

1. Exclude ACCP from your repackaging process, keeping ACCP's jar file unmodified, and deploying both your uber jar and ACCP jar as separate jar files.
2. Use a non-standard Java ClassLoader that allows loading a "jar of jars" (such as Spring-boot's NestedJarFile), and copy ACCP's Jar file into the parent Jar file so that ACCP's JCE signature remains intact.
3. Migrate to a different JDK (eg OpenJDK or CorrettoJDK) that does not require that JCE providers be signed.
4. Obtain your own JCE Code Signing Certificate and sign your repackaged Jar.

FIPS builds

FIPS builds are still experimental and are not yet ready for production use.

By providing -DFIPS=true to gradlew you will cause the entire build to be for a "FIPS mode" build. The FIPS builds use a different version of AWS-LC along with FIPS=1 build flag. Not all releases of AWS-LC will have FIPS certification. As a result, ACCP in FIPS mode only uses a version of AWS-LC that has FIPS certification or it will have in future.

For performance reasons, ACCP does not register a SecureRandom implementation in FIPS mode. Relevant operations within the FIPS module boundary (e.g. key generation, non-deterministic signing, etc.) will still use AWS-LC's internal DRBG. Users who require ACCP to provide FIPS-validated pseudo-randomness outside the module boundary via SecureRandom should set registerSecureRandom=true.

When changing between FIPS and non-FIPS builds, be sure to do a full clean of your build environment.

All targets

• clean: Remove all artifacts except AWS-LC build artifacts
• deep_clean: Remove the entire build/ directory including build artifacts from AWS-LC dependencies
• build: Build the library
• test: Run unit tests
• test_extra_checks: Run unit tests with extra (slow) cryptographic checks enabled
• test_integration: Run integration tests
• test_integration_extra_checks: Run integration tests with extra (slow) cryptographic checks enabled
• coverage: Run target test and collect both Java and C++ coverage metrics (saved in build/reports)
• release: Default target depends on build, test, and coverage
• overkill: Run all tests (no coverage)
• generateEclipseClasspath: Generates a .classpath file which is understandable by Eclipse and VS Code to make development easier. (This should ideally be run prior to opening ACCP in your IDE.)
• single_test: Runs a single unit test. The test is selected with the Java system property SINGLE_TEST. For example: ./gradlew single_test -DSINGLE_TEST=com.amazon.corretto.crypto.provider.test.EcGenTest (You may need to do a clean build when switching between selected tests.)

Configuration

There are several ways to configure the ACCP as the highest priority provider in Java.

Code

Run the following method early in program start up: com.amazon.corretto.crypto.provider.AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider.install()

Via Security Properties

Add the following Java property to your programs command line: -Djava.security.properties=/path/to/amazon-corretto-crypto-provider.security where amazon-corretto-crypto-provider.security is downloaded from amazon-corretto-crypto-provider.security (for JDK versions older than JDK15) or amazon-corretto-crypto-provider-jdk15.security (for JDK15 or newer) in our repository.

Modify the JVM settings

Modify the java.security file provided by your JVM so that the highest priority provider is the Amazon Corretto Crypto Provider. Look at amazon-corretto-crypto-provider.security (JDKs 11 and older) or amazon-corretto-crypto-provider-jdk15.security (for JDKs newer than 11) for an example of what this change will look like.

Verification (Optional)

If you want to check to verify that ACCP is properly working on your system, you can do any of the following:

1. Verify that the highest priority provider actually is ACCP:

if (Cipher.getInstance("AES/GCM/NoPadding").getProvider().getName().equals(AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider.PROVIDER_NAME)) {
    // Successfully installed
}

2. Ask ACCP about its health

if (AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider.INSTANCE.getLoadingError() == null && AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider.INSTANCE.runSelfTests().equals(SelfTestStatus.PASSED)) {
    // Successfully installed
}

3. Assert that ACCP is healthy and throw a RuntimeCryptoException if it isn't. We generally do not recommend this solution as we believe that gracefully falling back to other providers is usually the better option.

AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider.INSTANCE.assertHealthy();

Other system properties

ACCP can be configured via several system properties. None of these should be needed for standard deployments, and we recommend not touching them. They are of most use to developers needing to test ACCP or experiment with benchmarking. These are all read early in the load process and may be cached so any changes to them made from within Java may not be respected. Thus, these should all be set on the JVM command line using -D.

• com.amazon.corretto.crypto.provider.extrachecks Adds exta cryptographic consistency checks which are not necessary on standard systems. These checks may be computationally expensive and are not normally relevant. See ExtraCheck.java for values and more information. (Also accepts "ALL" as a value to enable all flags and "help" to print out all flags to STDERR.)
• com.amazon.corretto.crypto.provider.debug Enables extra debugging behavior. These behaviors may be computationally expensive, produce additional output, or otherwise change the behavior of ACCP. No values here will lower the security of ACCP or cause it to give incorrect results. See DebugFlag.java for values and more information. (Also accepts "ALL" as a value to enable all flags and "help" to print out all flags to STDERR.)
• com.amazon.corretto.crypto.provider.useExternalLib Takes in true or false (defaults to false). If true then ACCP skips trying to load the native library bundled within its JAR and goes directly to the system library path.
• com.amazon.corretto.crypto.provider.janitor.stripes Takes positive integer value which is the requested minimum number of "stripes" used by the Janitor for dividing cleaning tasks (messes) among its workers. (Current behavior is to default this value to 4 times the CPU core count and then round the value up to the nearest power of two.) See Janitor.java for for more information.
• com.amazon.corretto.crypto.provider.cacheselftestresults Takes in true or false (defaults to true). If set to true, the results of running tests are cached, and the subsequent calls to AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider::runSelfTests would avoid re-running tests; otherwise, each call to AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider::runSelfTests re-run the tests.
• com.amazon.corretto.crypto.provider.registerEcParams Takes in true or false (defaults to false). If true, then ACCP will register its EC-flavoered AlgorithmParameters implementation on startup. Else, the JCA will get the implementation from another registered provider (usually stock JCE). Using JCE's impelmentation is generally recommended unless using ACCP as a standalone provider Callers can choose to register ACCP's implementation at runtime with a call to AmazonCorrettoCryptoProvider.registerEcParams()
• com.amazon.corretto.crypto.provider.registerSecureRandom Takes in true or false (defaults to false in FIPS mode, defaults to true in non-FIPS). If true, then ACCP will register a SecureRandom implementation (LibCryptoRng) backed by AWS-LC Else, ACCP will not register a SecureRandom implementation, meaning that the JCA will source SecureRandom instances from another registered provider. AWS-LC will still use its internal DRBG for key generation and other operations requiring secure pseudo-randomness. LibCryptoRng is very fast during steady state operation in all cases. In FIPS mode, however, AWS-LC-FIPS's CPU jitter-based entropy source incurs a ~10ms initialization cost for every new thread. This means that there is a slight "pause" before ACCP FIPS's SecureRandom can produce pseudo-random bytes in highly threaded environments. Because, in extreme cases this could present an availability risk, we do not register LibCryptoRng by default in configurations where this initialization cost is incurred (i.e. FIPS mode). Non-FIPS AWS-LC does not use CPU jitter for its DRBG seed's entropy, and therefore does not incur this initialization cost, therefore we register LibCryptoRng by default when not in FIPS mode.
• com.amazon.corretto.crypto.provider.nativeContextReleaseStrategy Takes in HYBRID, LAZY, or EAGER (defaults ot HYBRID). This property only affects AES-GCM cipher for now. AES-GCM associates a native object of type EVP_CIPHER_CTX to each Cipher object. This property allows users to control the strategy for releasing the native object.
  • HYBRID (default): the structure is released eagerly, unless the same AES key is used. This is the default behavior, and it is consistent with prior releases of ACCP.
  • LAZY: preserve the native object and do not release while the Cipher object is not garbage collected.
  • EAGER: release the native object as soon as possible, regardless of using the same key or not. Our recommendation is to set this property to EAGER if Cipher objects are discarded after use and caching of Cipher objects is not needed. When reusing the same Cipher object, it would be beneficial to set this system property to LAZY so that different encryption/decryption operations would not require allocation and release of EVP_CIPHER_CTX structure. A common use case would be having long-running threads that each would get its own instance of Cipher class.
• com.amazon.corretto.crypto.provider.tmpdir Allows one to set the temporary directory used by ACCP when loading native libraries. If this system property is not defined, the system property java.io.tmpdir is used.

License

This library is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license although portions of this product include software licensed under the dual OpenSSL and SSLeay license. This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org), as well as cryptographic software written by Eric Young (eay@cryptsoft.com).

As of version 2.0.0, our backing native cryptographic library (now AWS-LC) also has some code published under MIT, Google's ISC, and 3-clause BSD licenses (among others). Please see AWS-LC's LICENSE file for full details.