Solo provides enterprise versions of Gloo and Istio images that are compliant to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS).

About

FIPS security requirements for cryptographic modules help protect sensitive data. Many internal and external security requirements require FIPS-compliant images, which can be an important step in achieving Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) compliance.

Third-party software, such as open source Kubernetes, Istio, or Envoy, do not inherit the cloud provider’s FIPS or FedRAMP compliance. Instead, you can use an enterprise version of the software that the vendor certifies to comply with FIPS.

Gloo images

Solo provides -fips distributions of the following Gloo Mesh (OSS APIs) images:

  • ext-auth-service
  • gloo-mesh-agent
  • gloo-mesh-apiserver
  • gloo-mesh-envoy
  • gloo-mesh-mgmt-server
  • gloo-mesh-spire-controller
  • otel-collector
  • gloo-mesh-portal-server
  • rate-limiter
  • rbac-webhook

Note that the gloo-mesh-ui component’s traffic is routed through a FIPS-compliant Envoy proxy, so the image does not have a standalone -fips build.

For more information about these components, review the Architecture page.

Istio images

Solo provides -fips distributions of the following Istio images:

  • Standard Istio images: An enterprise distribution of the community Istio project with additional security patches.
  • Solo: An enterprise distribution of the community Istio project with additional security patches, as well as certain Envoy filters to enable Gloo Mesh (OSS APIs) features.
  • Distroless standard or Solo FIPS images: A slimmed down distribution with the minimum set of binary dependencies to run the image, for enhanced performance and security.

For more information, see Solo distributions of Istio.

Install FIPS-compliant images

Solo offers FIPS builds of select images to help you meet FIPS compliance without any additional tooling or CLIs. You must configure the FIPS distribution of the images when you install Gloo Mesh (OSS APIs) or Istio, such as via Helm charts. These distributions include -fips suffixes in the image names.

Install Gloo FIPS images

You can download a particular image for Gloo Mesh (OSS APIs), such as for the following use cases.

  • To download and transfer these images if your environment does not have public network access or cannot pull public images, for an air-gapped installation.
  • To use a custom build that aligns with compliance standards, including FIPS.

Steps to install FIPS-compliant images:

  1. Get the version tag that you want to use.

      export GLOO_VERSION=2.8.4

  2. Add and update the gloo-platform Helm repository.

      helm repo add gloo-platform https://storage.googleapis.com/gloo-platform/helm-charts
helm repo update

  3. Download all the Helm chart values to use when preparing your Helm chart values file for installation.

      helm show values gloo-platform/gloo-platform --version $GLOO_VERSION > all-values.yaml

  4. Prepare your Helm chart values file for your new or existing Gloo installation.

      curl https://storage.googleapis.com/gloo-platform/helm-profiles/$GLOO_VERSION/gloo-mesh-single-cluster.yaml > gloo-single.yaml
open gloo-single.yaml

    Control plane:

      curl https://storage.googleapis.com/gloo-platform/helm-profiles/$GLOO_VERSION/mgmt-server.yaml > mgmt-plane.yaml
open mgmt-plane.yaml

    Data plane:

      curl https://storage.googleapis.com/gloo-platform/helm-profiles/$GLOO_VERSION/agent.yaml > data-plane.yaml
open data-plane.yaml
  
      helm get values gloo-platform -o yaml -n gloo-mesh > gloo-single.yaml
open gloo-single.yaml

    Control plane:

      helm get values gloo-platform -o yaml -n gloo-mesh --kube-context $MGMT_CONTEXT > mgmt-plane.yaml
open mgmt-plane.yaml

    Data plane:

      helm get values gloo-platform -o yaml -n gloo-mesh --kube-context $REMOTE_CONTEXT > data-plane.yaml
open data-plane.yaml

  5. For FIPS-compliant images, open the Helm values file, search for or create the section for the component, and append -fips to the image tag, such as in the following example. You can use the all-values.yaml file to review the available components and their sections.

      ...
glooMgmtServer:
  image:
    pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
    registry: gcr.io/gloo-mesh
    repository: gloo-mesh-mgmt-server
    tag: 2.8.4-fips
...
glooAgent:
  image:
    pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
    registry: gcr.io/gloo-mesh
    repository: gloo-mesh-agent
    tag: 2.8.4-fips

  6. Optional: If you need to pull the images locally, such as for an air-gapped installation, you can use the information you retrieved from the images section in the values.yaml file to pull the image. For example, you might use the following docker pull command for a FIPS image. Repeat this step for each image that you want to build locally and push to a private repository.

      docker pull gcr.io/gloo-mesh/gloo-mesh-mgmt-server:2.8.4-fips

  7. Use these packages when you install or upgrade Gloo Mesh (OSS APIs).

    For example, you might use the following helm upgrade commands.

      helm upgrade -i gloo-platform gloo-platform/gloo-platform \
--namespace gloo-mesh \
-f gloo-single.yaml \
--version $GLOO_VERSION

    Control plane:

      helm upgrade -i gloo-platform gloo-platform/gloo-platform \
--kube-context $MGMT_CONTEXT \
--namespace gloo-mesh \
-f mgmt-plane.yaml \
--version $GLOO_VERSION

    Data plane:

      helm upgrade -i gloo-platform gloo-platform/gloo-platform \
--kube-context $REMOTE_CONTEXT \
--namespace gloo-mesh \
-f data-plane.yaml \
--version $GLOO_VERSION

Install Istio FIPS images

Install Istio with FIPS-compliant images.

  1. To find the FIPS build that you want, see Download a specific Solo distribution of Istio.

  2. Use the -fips image when you install Istio, such as 1.25.2-solo-fips. You can choose from the following installation methods:

    • To use the Gloo Operator to deploy and manage the lifecycle of your Istio service meshes, see the Gloo Operator ambient mesh guide.
    • To manually install Istio, you can use an installation method such as using Helm. For example, you can follow the steps in the Helm ambient mesh guide. In the example files that you download in this guide, make sure to replace any images with a Solo FIPS distribution of Istio-tagged image.

Verify FIPS compliance

For most auditors, both the control plane and the data plane in each cluster must be FIPS compliant. You can verify that your images are a FIPS-compliant version by checking your Gloo and Istio components on each cluster.

Verify Gloo components

To verify the Gloo components, check the image tag of each deployment.

Example command to check the gloo-mesh-agent image tag:

  kubectl get pods -n gloo-mesh -l app=gloo-mesh-agent -o jsonpath="{.items[*].spec.containers[?(@.name=='gloo-mesh-agent')].image}"

Example output: Notice the -fips suffix in the image tag.

  gcr.io/gloo-mesh/gloo-mesh-agent:2.8.4-fips

Verify Istio components

  1. Verify that the Istio control plane components are FIPS compliant.

      kubectl exec -it -n istio-system $(kubectl get pod -n istio-system -l app=istiod -o jsonpath="{.items[0].metadata.name}") -- /usr/local/bin/pilot-discovery version

    Example output: Note the -fips suffix in the Version and GitTag fields, and the X:boringcrypto in the GolangVersion field. The GolangVersion field indicates that the Go binary was compiled with BoringCrypto, a FIPS-compliant cryptographic module.

      client version: version.BuildInfo{
  Version:"1.25.2-solo-fips",
  GitRevision:"e5ace34007bff13f4ed049521d9411a51639b029",
  GolangVersion:"go1.22.7 X:boringcrypto",
  BuildStatus:"Clean",
  GitTag:"1.25.2-solo-fips"
  }

  2. Get the hexdump of the pilot-discovery binary file. Hexdump is a command-line utility that displays the contents of a binary file in a hexadecimal format. As such, you can verify that the binary file includes FIPS-related cryptographic components.

      kubectl exec -it -n istio-system $(kubectl get pod -n istio-system -l app=istiod -o jsonpath="{.items[0].metadata.name}") -- sh -c "hexdump -C /usr/local/bin/pilot-discovery | grep -i fips"

    Example output: Verify that the output of the last column, which is theASCII representation of the hexidecimal binary columns, includes information related to FIPS crypto modules.

      016f0b50  00 00 00 48 8b 0d 96 f2  c0 03 48 ba 66 69 70 73  |...H......H.fips|
0242f6f0  2f 66 69 70 73 6d 6f 64  75 6c 65 2f 62 6e 2f 61  |/fipsmodule/bn/a|
0242f720  63 00 2e 2e 2f 63 72 79  70 74 6f 2f 66 69 70 73  |c.../crypto/fips|
0242f740  2e 2e 2f 63 72 79 70 74  6f 2f 66 69 70 73 6d 6f  |../crypto/fipsmo|
...