From owner-freebsd-current Sun Jul 23 23: 3:10 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from grimreaper.grondar.za (grimreaper.grondar.za [196.7.18.138]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 725A737BA2E; Sun, 23 Jul 2000 23:03:02 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mark@grondar.za) Received: from grimreaper.grondar.za (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by grimreaper.grondar.za (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA03449; Mon, 24 Jul 2000 08:03:02 +0200 (SAST) (envelope-from mark@grimreaper.grondar.za) Message-Id: <200007240603.IAA03449@grimreaper.grondar.za> To: Kris Kennaway Cc: current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: randomdev entropy gathering is really weak References: In-Reply-To: ; from Kris Kennaway "Sun, 23 Jul 2000 18:04:50 MST." Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 08:03:02 +0200 From: Mark Murray Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > http://www.counterpane.com/pseudorandom_number.html > > Cryptlib is described here: > > http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/cryptlib/ Thanks! > > Asynchonous reseeding _improves_ the situation; the attacker cannot force > > it to any degree of accuracy, and if he has the odds stacked heavily against > > him that each 256-bits of output will have an associated reseed, it makes > > his job pretty damn difficult. > > What I meant with that point is that the user may get, say an extra few > hundred bits out of it with no new entropy before the scheduled reseed > task kicks in. How does he know which bits are which? His analysis task just got a whole lot more difficult. M -- Mark Murray Join the anti-SPAM movement: http://www.cauce.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message