TÜV Rheinland Nederland B.V.
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Version
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Certification Report
nShield Solo XC Hardware Security Module v12.60.15
Sponsor: Entrust
Minneapolis1187 Park Place
Shakopee, MN 55379
USA
Developer: nCipher Security Limited (an Entrust company)
One Station Square
Cambridge CB1 2GA
UK
Evaluation facility: Brightsight B.V
Brassersplein 2
2612 CT Delft
The Netherlands
Report number: NSCIB-CC-0368256-CR
Report version: 1
Project number: 0368256
Author(s): Denise Cater
Date: 17 March 2021
Number of pages: 12
Number of appendices: 0
Reproduction of this report is authorized provided the report is reproduced in its entirety.
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CONTENTS:
Foreword 3
Recognition of the certificate 4
International recognition 4
European recognition 4
1 Executive Summary 5
2 Certification Results 6
2.1 Identification of Target of Evaluation 6
2.2 Security Policy 6
2.3 Assumptions and Clarification of Scope 6
2.4 Architectural Information 7
2.5 Documentation 8
2.6 IT Product Testing 8
2.7 Re-used evaluation results 9
2.8 Evaluated Configuration 9
2.9 Results of the Evaluation 10
2.10 Comments/Recommendations 10
3 Security Target 11
4 Definitions 11
5 Bibliography 12
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Foreword
The Netherlands Scheme for Certification in the Area of IT Security (NSCIB) provides a third-party
evaluation and certification service for determining the trustworthiness of Information Technology (IT)
security products. Under this NSCIB, TÜV Rheinland Nederland B.V. has the task of issuing
certificates for IT security products, as well as for protection profiles and sites.
Part of the procedure is the technical examination (evaluation) of the product, protection profile or site
according to the Common Criteria assessment guidelines published by the NSCIB. Evaluations are
performed by an IT Security Evaluation Facility (ITSEF) under the oversight of the NSCIB Certification
Body, which is operated by TÜV Rheinland Nederland B.V. in cooperation with the Ministry of the
Interior and Kingdom Relations.
An ITSEF in the Netherlands is a commercial facility that has been licensed by TÜV Rheinland
Nederland B.V. to perform Common Criteria evaluations; a significant requirement for such a license is
accreditation to the requirements of ISO Standard 17025 “General requirements for the accreditation
of calibration and testing laboratories”.
By awarding a Common Criteria certificate, TÜV Rheinland Nederland B.V. asserts that the product or
site complies with the security requirements specified in the associated (site) security target, or that
the protection profile (PP) complies with the requirements for PP evaluation specified in the Common
Criteria for Information Security Evaluation. A (site) security target is a requirements specification
document that defines the scope of the evaluation activities.
The consumer should review the (site) security target or protection profile, in addition to this
certification report, in order to gain an understanding of any assumptions made during the evaluation,
the IT product's intended environment, its security requirements, and the level of confidence (i.e., the
evaluation assurance level) that the product or site satisfies the security requirements stated in the
(site) security target.
Reproduction of this report is authorized provided the report is reproduced in its entirety.
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Recognition of the certificate
Presence of the Common Criteria Recognition Arrangement and SOG-IS logos on the certificate
indicates that this certificate is issued in accordance with the provisions of the CCRA and the SOG-IS
agreement and will be recognised by the participating nations.
International recognition
The CCRA has been signed by the Netherlands in May 2000 and provides mutual recognition of
certificates based on the CC. Starting September 2014 the CCRA has been updated to provide mutual
recognition of certificates based on cPPs (exact use) or STs with evaluation assurance components
up to and including EAL2+ALC_FLR. The current list of signatory nations and approved certification
schemes can be found on: http://www.commoncriteriaportal.org.
European recognition
The European SOGIS-Mutual Recognition Agreement (SOGIS-MRA) version 3 effective from April
2010 provides mutual recognition of Common Criteria and ITSEC certificates at a basic evaluation
level for all products. A higher recognition level for evaluation levels beyond EAL4 (resp. E3-basic) is
provided for products related to specific technical domains. This agreement was initially signed by
Finland, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Italy
joined the SOGIS-MRA in December 2010. The current list of signatory nations, approved certification
schemes and the list of technical domains for which the higher recognition applies can be found on:
http://www.sogisportal.eu.
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1 Executive Summary
This Certification Report states the outcome of the Common Criteria security evaluation of the nShield
Solo XC Hardware Security Module v12.60.15. The developer of the nShield Solo XC Hardware
Security Module v12.60.15 is nCipher Security Limited located in Cambridge, UK. The sponsor of the
evaluation and certification is Entrust, located in Shakopee, USA. A Certification Report is intended to
assist prospective consumers when judging the suitability of the IT security properties of the product
for their particular requirements.
The TOE can be used as a general purpose Cryptographic Module in a wide range of use cases,
including, but not limited to, Trust Service Providers to provide a QSCD for Remote Server Signing.
The TOE is a general purpose Cryptographic Module which comes in a PCI express board form factor
protected by a tamper resistant enclosure. It performs encryption, digital signing, and key
management on behalf of an extensive range of commercial and custom-built applications including
public key infrastructures (PKIs), identity management systems, application-level encryption and
tokenization, SSL/TLS, and code signing.
The nShield Solo XC HSM can also be embedded inside the nShield Connect XC, which is a network-
attached appliance delivering cryptographic services as a shared network resource for distributed
applications and virtual machines, giving organizations a highly secure solution for establishing
physical and logical controls for server-based systems.
The TOE has been evaluated by Brightsight B.V. located in Delft, The Netherlands. The evaluation
was completed on 17 March 2021 with the approval of the ETR. The certification procedure has been
conducted in accordance with the provisions of the Netherlands Scheme for Certification in the Area of
IT Security [NSCIB].
The scope of the evaluation is defined by the security target [ST], which identifies assumptions made
during the evaluation, the intended environment for the nShield Solo XC Hardware Security Module
v12.60.15, the security requirements, and the level of confidence (evaluation assurance level) at which
the product is intended to satisfy the security requirements. Consumers of the nShield Solo XC
Hardware Security Module v12.60.15 are advised to verify that their own environment is consistent
with the security target, and to give due consideration to the comments, observations and
recommendations in this certification report.
The results documented in the evaluation technical report [ETR]
1
for this product provides sufficient
evidence that the TOE meets the EAL4 augmented (EAL4+) assurance requirements for the evaluated
security functionality. This assurance level is augmented with ALC_FLR.2 (Flaw remediation) and
AVA_VAN.5 (Advanced methodical vulnerability analysis).
The evaluation was conducted using the Common Methodology for Information Technology Security
Evaluation, Version 3.1 Revision 5 and [CEM] for conformance to the Common Criteria for Information
Technology Security Evaluation, version 3.1 Revision 5 [CC] (Parts I, II and III).
TÜV Rheinland Nederland B.V., as the NSCIB Certification Body, declares that the evaluation meets
all the conditions for international recognition of Common Criteria Certificates and that the product will
be listed on the NSCIB Certified Products list. It should be noted that the certification results only apply
to the specific version of the product as evaluated.
1
The Evaluation Technical Report contains information proprietary to the developer and/or the
evaluator, and is not releasable for public review.
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2 Certification Results
2.1 Identification of Target of Evaluation
The Target of Evaluation (TOE) for this evaluation is the nShield Solo XC Hardware Security Module
v12.60.15 from nCipher Security Limited located in Cambridge, UK.
The TOE is comprised of the following main components:
Delivery
item type
Identifier Version
Hardware
nShield Solo XC F2 nC3025E-000 rev 06
nShield Solo XC F3 nC4035E-000 rev 06
nShield Solo XC for nShield Connect XC nC4335N-000 rev 06
This module is embedded in the nShield
Connect XC appliance with model number
NH2075-x or NH2089-x (where x is B, M
or H)
Software Solo XC firmware image v12.60.15
To ensure secure usage a set of guidance documents is provided together with the nShield Solo XC
Hardware Security Module v12.60.15. Details can be found in section 2.5 of this report.
2.2 Security Policy
The TOE implements key generation, key import/export and key agreement. It also provides
cryptographic services including digital signature, encryption/decryption, message digest, message
authentication and Random Number Generation. The supported algorithms and key sizes are
specified in [ST] Table 2.
2.3 Assumptions and Clarification of Scope
2.3.1 Assumptions
The assumptions defined in the Security Target are not covered by the TOE itself. These aspects lead
to specific Security Objectives to be fulfilled by the TOE-Environment. Detailed information on these
security objectives that must be fulfilled by the TOE environment can be found in section 4.2 of the
[ST].
2.3.2 Clarification of scope
The evaluation did not reveal any threats to the TOE that are not countered by the evaluated security
functions of the product.
Note that EN 419221-5 Protection Profile [EN419221-5] claims the environment for the TOE protects
against loss or theft of the TOE, deters and detects physical tampering, protects against attacks based
on emanations of the TOE, and protects against unauthorised software and configuration changes on
the TOE and the hardware appliance it is contained in (“OE.Env Protected operating environment”).
The ST follows the PP and also claims OE.Env, thus the environment in which the TOE is used must
ensure the above protection.
Any threats violating these objectives for the environment are not considered.
The TOE does not implement an optional trusted path to an external application therefore the SFR,
FTP_TRP.1/External, which is marked as optional in the Protection Profile, has been removed in [ST].
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2.4 Architectural Information
The TOE supports two configurations as detailed in section 1.3.2 of [ST].
The TOE comes in a PCI express board form factor protected by a tamper resistant enclosure, and
can also be embedded inside the nShield Connect XC, which is a network-attached appliance.
The logical boundary of the TOE comprises the firmware located inside the PCIe board, with the
exception of embedded CodeSafe applications and is comprised of the following subsystems:
The TOE provides the following security features:
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 Cryptographic functions, including digital signature, encryption/decryption, key agreement,
message digest, message authentication, key generation,
 Random Number Generation,
 Secure key management,
 Secure logging,
 Physical tamper resistance meeting [ISO 19790] Level 3.
2.5 Documentation
The following documentation is provided with the product by the developer to the customer:
Identifier Version
nShield Solo XC Common Criteria Evaluated Configuration Guide V1.1,
dated Tuesday 16
March, 2021
2.6 IT Product Testing
Testing (depth, coverage, functional tests, independent testing): The evaluators examined the
developer’s testing activities documentation and verified that the developer has met their testing
responsibilities.
2.6.1 Testing approach and depth
The developer has performed extensive testing on functional specification, subsystem and SFR-
enforcing module level. For each SFR the developer created an extensive set of automatic tests,
testing positively and negatively. Crypto testing for the FCS_COP requirements are tested against two
oracles the CAVS verification tool and the OpenSSL implementation. For all tests the log files were
also collected, showing full coverage of the FAU_GEN requirements. All nCore commands over the
PCIe TSFI are tested via the external nCore PCIe interface, the SEE system-calls are tested by
executing a local application on the TOE.
Additionally the developer implemented a set of manual test cases focusing on internals of the TOE
functionality and behaviour.
The combination of the automated tests, the manual tests and the hardware tests demonstrate the
correct behaviour of all the TSFIs, with exception of the Clear Button and the Mode Switch. The
functionality however of these TSFIs are tested by the developer using the nCore commands and
were also the subject of independent evaluator testing.
The evaluator repeated all the tests of the following test sets: Ncoretest, Seccomp, Crypto Validation.
This was performed on the developer development site. These test scenario tests all nCore
functionality related to SFR-related actions as invoked by the host, cryptographic validation tests and
test for syscalls within SEE machine, firmware downgrade/corruption tests and the tests for disabled
nCore commands. The evaluator also performed a sample of the manual testing to confirm the results
and test procedure are as expected.
The evaluator also assessed the developer test case against all the SFRs and noted there are few
SFRs that are not fully tested. The evaluator defined a few complementary tests to validate the TOE
behaviours that were not covered by the developer tests.
In addition the refinements of ATE_IND.2 specified in [EN419221-5] were addressed during evaluator
independent testing, namely:
(1) The evaluator shall execute the electronic signature and electronic seal operations provided
by the TOE and shall confirm that the signatures and seals returned by the TOE correspond to
the correct DTBS.
(2) If software and/or firmware updates are supported by the TOE then the evaluator shall carry
out tests to ensure that only updates with valid digital signatures can be installed on the TOE.
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2.6.2 Independent Penetration Testing
The AVA_VAN.5 assurance class requires the evaluator to conduct a methodical vulnerability analysis
based on publicly available source of information and based on structured examination of the
evidence while performing previous evaluation activities (ASE, ADV, AGD, ATE).
In the AVA_VAN.5 refinement defined in [EN419221-5] is required that, the TOE hardware is tested
as described in section 7.7.2 Physical security general requirements and section 7.7.3 Physical
security requirements for each physical security embodiment in [ISO 19790] for Security Level 3.
These tests were performed by the developer and verified by the evaluator in their ATE analysis.
Given that restriction in the [EN419221-5] on physical attack, the vulnerability analysis focused on
logical attacks. The methodology for which involved the following five steps:
 Step 1: The first step of this type of vulnerability analysis is the identification of areas of
concern. The areas of concern are identified by the evaluator using the generic weaknesses
enumeration database, an open source publicly maintained dictionary of SW weaknesses.
 Step 2: collecting possible vulnerabilities from the design assessment by asking security
questions inspired by generic weaknesses separately for all security implementations of the
TOE.
 Step 3: collecting possible vulnerabilities from applicable attack lists and public vulnerability
search.
 Step 4: These security relevant questions are then translated into TOE-specific possible
vulnerabilities.
 Step 5: the evaluator argued whether a possible vulnerability is removed or sufficiently
mitigated by the TOE implementation/environment/functional testing evidence. If yes, the
possible vulnerability is considered as solved, otherwise it is uniquely labelled as potential
vulnerability. Potential vulnerabilities are then addressed in the context of further assessment,
penetration tests and/or further code review. The analysis led to execution of three penetration
tests.
2.6.3 Test Configuration
The testing was performed on the nShield Solo XC F2 (PCIe board) installed in a COTS server. This is
representative for all TOE variants. The evaluator performed testing using an earlier release of the
firmware (12.60.13). The changes between 12.60.13 and the TOE version 12.60.15 were analysed
and the evaluator confirmed that the test results obtained were equally applicable for the 12.60.15
release.
2.6.4 Testing Results
The testing activities, including configurations, procedures, test cases, expected results and observed
results are summarised in the [ETR], with references to the documents containing the full details.
The developer’s tests and the independent functional tests produced the expected results, giving
assurance that the TOE behaves as specified in its [ST] and functional specification.
No exploitable vulnerabilities were found with the independent penetration tests.
The algorithmic security level of cryptographic functionality has not been rated in this certification
process, but the current consensus on the algorithmic security level in the open domain, i.e. from the
current best cryptanalytic attacks published, has been taken into account.
2.7 Re-used evaluation results
There has been extensive re-use of the ALC aspects for the sites involved in the development and
production of the TOE. This was supported by further (remote) site audits performed during the
conduct of this evaluation
2.8 Evaluated Configuration
The TOE is defined uniquely by its name and version number nShield Solo XC Hardware Security
Module v12.60.15, with the firmware and hardware components are detailed in section Identification of
Target of Evaluation above.
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2.9 Results of the Evaluation
The evaluation lab documented their evaluation results in the [ETR], which references an ASE
Intermediate Report and other evaluator documents.
The verdict of each claimed assurance requirement is “Pass”.
Based on the above evaluation results the evaluation lab concluded the nShield Solo XC Hardware
Security Module v12.60.15, to be CC Part 2 extended, CC Part 3 refined, and to meet the
requirements of EAL 4 augmented with AVA_VAN.5 and ALC_FLR.2. This implies that the product
satisfies the security requirements specified in Security Target [ST].
The Security Target claims ‘strict’ conformance to the Protection Profile [EN419221-5].
2.10 Comments/Recommendations
The user guidance as outlined in section 2.5 contains necessary information about the usage of the
TOE. Certain aspects of the TOE’s security functionality, in particular the countermeasures against
attacks, depend on accurate conformance to the user guidance of both the software and the hardware
part of the TOE. There are no particular obligations or recommendations for the user apart from
following the user guidance. Please note that the documents contain relevant details with respect to
the resistance against certain attacks.
The users are advised to carefully verify the hardware version as described in the “Standalone Solo
XC configuration” section of nShield Solo XC Common Criteria Evaluated Configuration Guide,
including a check that the serial number is of the form 46-Xnnnnn A.
In addition all aspects of assumptions, threats and policies as outlined in the Security Target not
covered by the TOE itself need to be fulfilled by the operational environment of the TOE.
The customer or user of the product shall consider the results of the certification within his system risk
management process. In order for the evolution of attack methods and techniques to be covered, he
should define the period of time until a re-assessment for the TOE is required and thus requested from
the sponsor of the certificate.
The strength of the cryptographic algorithms and protocols was not rated in the course of this
evaluation. This specifically applies to the following proprietary or non-standard algorithms, protocols
and implementations: None.
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3 Security Target
The nShield Solo XC HSM Security Target, version 1.1, dated Tuesday, March 09, 2021 [ST] is
included here by reference.
4 Definitions
This list of Acronyms and the glossary of terms contains elements that are not already defined by the
CC or CEM:
AES Advanced Encryption Standard
ECC Elliptic Curve Cryptography
ECDSA Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm
IT Information Technology
ITSEF IT Security Evaluation Facility
JIL Joint Interpretation Library
NSCIB Netherlands Scheme for Certification in the area of IT security
PKI Public Key Infrastructure
PP Protection Profile
QSCD Qualified Signature/Seal Creation Device
RNG Random Number Generator
RSA Rivest-Shamir-Adleman Algorithm
SHA Secure Hash Algorithm
TOE Target of Evaluation
TRNG True Random Number Generator
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5 Bibliography
This section lists all referenced documentation used as source material in the compilation of this
report:
[CC] Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation, Parts I, II and III,
Version 3.1 Revision 5, April 2017.
[CEM] Common Methodology for Information Technology Security Evaluation, Version 3.1
Revision 5, April 2017.
[ETR] Evaluation Technical Report “nShield Solo XC Hardware Security Module
v12.60.15” – EAL4+, 20-RPT-1247, v2.0, 10 March 2021.
[ISO 19790] ISO/IEC 19790:2012 Information technology – Security techniques – Security
requirements for cryptographic modules.
[JIL-AAPHD] Application of Attack Potential to Hardware Devices with Security Boxes, Version
3.0, July 2020.
[JIL-AMHD] Attack Methods for Hardware Devices with Security Boxes, Version 3.0, February
2020 (sensitive with controlled distribution).
[NSCIB] Netherlands Scheme for Certification in the Area of IT Security, Version 2.5, 28
March 2019.
[EN419221-5] EN 419 221-5:2018, Protection Profiles for TSP Cryptographic Modules – Part 5
Cryptographic Module for Trust Services, v1.0, registered under the reference
ANSSI-CC-PP-2016/05-M01, 18 May 2020.
[ST] nShield Solo XC HSM Security Target, version 1.1, dated Tuesday, March 09,
2021.
(This is the end of this report).