Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 31 May 2006 15:29:59 -0400 | From | Bill Davidsen <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 7/14] random: Remove SA_SAMPLE_RANDOM from network drivers |
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Theodore Tso wrote: > On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 12:47:18AM +0200, Marcin Dalecki wrote: >> Anytime you start to make unquantified assumptions in the context of >> / dev/random the issue turns up that this whole thing is not worth >> the trouble because much simpler approaches will be sufficient >> enough to acomplish what it does. On the other hand you can't >> provide any actual full analysis of it's behaviour - which is just >> *not acceptable* for anybody trully concerned. And this in >> conjunction makes the WHOLE idea behind it questionable. > > Nobody can provide any kind of full analysis about whether or not > SHA-2 or AES is secure, either. Does that we mean we just give up and > go home? No, we do the best job we can, with the best information we > have. Sometimes that means we have to make assumptions, but the > entire construction of AES and SHA-2 is based on similar assumptions, > too. > > Academics who make "full analysis" generally use as axioms things like > "assume MD5 is secure" or "assume SHA-1 is secure", which are really > fancy assumptions. If we had used a "simpler approaches" based such > axioms we might have been in trouble. So I think some of the analysis > and designs choices that I made in /dev/random is most definitely > worth the trouble. > > Regards, > > - Ted As usual I agree with you, for lack of a really good random source it's worth doing the best possible job with what's available. Would be nice to have a cheap USB bit babbler, tho.
-- Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> Obscure bug of 2004: BASH BUFFER OVERFLOW - if bash is being run by a normal user and is setuid root, with the "vi" line edit mode selected, and the character set is "big5," an off-by-one errors occurs during wildcard (glob) expansion.
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