Question

I was able to follow directions in this question to build a shared lib of openssl for Android.

E.g.

cd openssl-fips-2.0/
./config
make
make install

And

cd openssl-1.0.1c/
./config fips --with-fipsdir=/usr/local/ssl/fips-2.0/ shared
make depend
make

This generates libcrypto.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0 with corresponding symbolic links to them as libcrypto.so and libssl.so.

Since the NDK build system doesn’t support versioned shared libraries I had to use the symbolic links (with PREBUILT_SHARED_LIBRARY). However, with this, the libraries end up getting to the device as libcrypto.so and libssl.so instead of as libcrypto.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0 causing my library to fail to load as it is looking for the libraries with the version names.

The linked question mentions loading the libraries with System.load(libcrypto.so.1.0.0) instead of with System.loadLibrary() but I have not been able to get this to work even with full paths since as mentioned earlier, the file is copied to the device as libcrypto.so.

Anyone done this successfully?

Note: I’ve also tried modifying the openssl-1.0.1c config and makefiles to generate libcrypto.1.0.0.so (e.g. with the version number before the extension in the filename and soname) and this allowed me to get around the previous loading issue. However, with that I get an error when I try to turn on FIPS mode with FIPS_module_mode_set (FIPS_R_FINGERPRINT_DOES_NOT_MATCH).

I don’t know yet why that is happening, but it could be due to NDK stripping of ‘unneeded’ stuff (see this question)… I’m still looking at this as well but if someone has some info on this as well it would be MUCH appreciated.

Answer 1

Let us identify the problem correctly. It’s likely not the NDK build that causes problems, and definitely not the linker which strips away unused entries when it builds a shared lib from static lib.

First of all, I am not sure you can deliver FIPS mode in a usual APK, without rebuilding or at least rooting Android (see for example http://gcn.com/articles/2010/12/23/android-fips-security.aspx).

There is no problem for System.load() to load a versioned .so when you a) specify the full path correctly (e.g. System.load("/data/local/tmp/libssl.so.1.0.0")) and b) the file is delivered to that path. For the first tests, I would suggest to manually upload libcrypto.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0 to /sdcard/ and see if FIPS fingerprint becomes happier.

If the location on /sdcard/ causes any problem, you can try /data/local/ or /data/local/tmp/. You can also use /data/data/(your package)/files/. The latter has one advantage: it will be automatically deleted by the system when your app is uninstalled.

To make a versioned .so (like libcrypto.so.1.0.0) part of your APK, copy it to the assets folder of your project. It will be responsibility of your Java code to copy it from there to the designated location on disk. Make sure this Java code handles correctly upgrades and SD card swaps.