Anyway, needing FIPS is something of a niche requirement. Debian or Rocky are very sane choices as a default Linux distribution for general-purpose servers until you run up against special requirements.
It doesn't have much to do with this CVE, but if you're trying to sell to the US government, it will often be a requirement, which means that a company making money from those sales will not easily be able to move to a distro without that certification.
This isn't relevant to the CVE, but counters the claim that Debian is always a suitable choice of distribution.
presumably they mean meeting fips standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIPS_140
>why is FIPS unique to RHEL
its not
>what has FIPS got to do with this CVE?
it doesnt. it is brought up in reply to the comment.
https://packages.debian.org/trixie/openssl-provider-fips
It's just the library, nothing special about the OS.
https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/cryptographic-module-validati...
As far as I know, compliance comes with an external module:
https://openssl-library.org/post/2025-03-11-fips-140-3/
This module seems to be in Debian:
# apt-cache search fips | grep open openssl-provider-fips - Secure Sockets Layer toolkit - cryptographic utility
# dpkg -L openssl-provider-fips /. /usr /usr/lib /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ossl-modules /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ossl-modules/fips.so /usr/share /usr/share/doc /usr/share/doc/openssl-provider-fips /usr/share/doc/openssl-provider-fips/changelog.Debian.gz /usr/share/doc/openssl-provider-fips/changelog.gz /usr/share/doc/openssl-provider-fips/copyright
There seems to be the validation process, which supposedly must run on each machine it is used on.
openssl fipsinstall -out /tmp/configfile.cnf -module /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ossl-modules/fips.so 2>&1 | tee /tmp/result.txt
--
The above are from my notes, and a test run. But I don't see how Redhat is "special" here. If the module loads and cites compliance, you comply.
It isn't a validated build. It works the same, but it isn't sufficient if you actually need a validated FIPS module.
> It's just the library, nothing special about the OS.
If you need validation, then the kernel also need to be validated.
Now, it isn't impossible to get a FIPS validated system working with Debian, but you will probably need to contract with another commercial provider like WolfSSL to get validated components. Or compile things yourself. But that is more complicated and involved than just paying for an OS that is validated off the shelf from Ubuntu, Red Hat, or Suse.