What is a “FIPS” standard?
FIPS stands for “Federal Information Processing Standard.” FIPS standards are published in FIPS PUBS. These standards and guidelines are issued by NIST for use by the U.S. government. NIST develops FIPS when there are compelling federal government requirements for security and interoperability and there are no acceptable industry standards or solutions to these requirements. Of particular relevance to cryptovirology is the FIPS 140-2 standard entitled, “Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules” [FIPS140] and its annexes. The annexes employ the FIPS 186-2 standard entitled, “Digital Signature Standard (DSS)” [FIPS186] for such things as key generation. Collectively, these standards dictate such things as: physical security requirements, approved RNGs, approved key generation algorithms, zeroization of keys, statistical tests for randomness, electromagnetic interference and radiation issues, and so on. These standards are relevant to cryptovirology since companies rely heavily on
