linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] random: add blocking facility to urandom

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Message-ID: <118704.1315706746@turing-police.cc.vt.edu>
Date:	Sat, 10 Sep 2011 22:05:46 -0400
From:	Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu
To:	Sandy Harris <sandyinchina@...il.com>
Cc:	Steve Grubb <sgrubb@...hat.com>, Neil Horman <nhorman@...hat.com>,
	Tomas Mraz <tmraz@...hat.com>,
	Sasha Levin <levinsasha928@...il.com>,
	"Ted Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>, Jarod Wilson <jarod@...hat.com>,
	linux-crypto@...r.kernel.org, Matt Mackall <mpm@...enic.com>,
	Herbert Xu <herbert.xu@...hat.com>,
	Stephan Mueller <stephan.mueller@...ec.com>,
	lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] random: add blocking facility to urandom

On Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:21:13 +0800, Sandy Harris said:
> Barring a complete failure of SHA-1, an enemy who wants to
> infer the state from outputs needs astronomically large amounts
> of both data and effort.

So let me get this straight - the movie-plot attack we're defending against is
somebody readin literally gigabytes to terabytes (though I suspect realistic
attacks will require peta/exabytes) of data from /dev/urandom, then performing
all the data reduction needed to infer the state of enough of the entropy pool
to infer all 160 bits of SHA-1 when only 80 bits are output...

*and* doing it all without taking *any* action that adds any entropy to the
pool, and *also* ensuring that no other programs add any entropy via their
actions before the reading and data reduction completes. (Hint - if the
attacker can do this, you're already pwned and have bigger problems)

/me thinks RedHat needs to start insisting on random drug testing for
their security experts at BSI.  EIther that, or force BSI to share the
really good stuff they've been smoking, or they need to learn how huge
a number 2^160 *really* is....

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