Re: New entropy source proposal.

From: David Schultz (das_at_FreeBSD.ORG)
Date: 03/08/05

  • Next message: Jeremie Le Hen: "[djm@cvs.openbsd.org: OpenSSH 4.0 released]" 
    Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 10:24:30 -0500
To: Richard Coleman <rcoleman@criticalmagic.com>

    On Tue, Mar 08, 2005, Richard Coleman wrote:
    > Ian G wrote:
    > >You might want to check out:
    > >
    > >http://www.av8n.com/turbid/paper/turbid.htm
    > >
    > >There is some controversy over the new FreeBSD /dev/random system,
    > >is there any analysis of the system? I wasn't able to find anything
    > >from a brief search.
    > >
    > >iang
    >
    > The FreeBSD /dev/random was originally based on the Yarrow paper that is
    > given as a reference in the paper above. But I think the current
    > implementation is more similar to to the version of Yarrow that is
    > discussed in Bruce Schneier's "Practical Cryptography". I'm not sure if
    > that is a coincidence or not.
    >
    > The paper mentioned above only briefly mentions Yarrow, and doesn't
    > mention the FreeBSD implementation, so it's hard to compare the two.
    >
    > At first glance, both systems appear strong.

    There's also:

            http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/bsdcon02/full_papers/murray/murray_html/

    The only objection with it that I'm aware of is that the random
    device does not ordinarily block, which may make it vulnerable to
    side channel or cryptanalytic attacks.
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