While looking into the "FIPS mode" of OpenSSL recently, I found this. What puzzled me was the footnote about "secure installation", and the details from section 6.6 of the OpenSSL FIPS User Guide. To count as a valid installation that fulfills all of the requirements, users are required to verify the integrity of the OpenSSL FIPS sources with an independently acquired FIPS 140-2-validated cryptographic module. The programmer in us immediately shouts "Infinite recursion!" and what seems like an overly academical troll on behalf of the CMVP at first turns out to be a delicate issue, while not novel at all, but with far-reaching consequences for the status of any "validated" piece of software in general, or as the OpenSSL FIPS User Guide puts it:
>Note this last point is downright mind-boggling: it amounts to an assertion that essentially all installations of v