[146911] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: [Cryptography] Techniques for malevolent crypto hardware
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kent Borg)
Mon Sep 9 09:54:02 2013
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 09:17:20 -0400
From: Kent Borg <kentborg@borg.org>
To: Jerry Leichter <leichter@lrw.com>, cryptography@metzdowd.com
In-Reply-To: <52B65066-5F29-4DA2-A7DC-3260FC5656E0@lrw.com>
Errors-To: cryptography-bounces+crypto.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@metzdowd.com
On 09/08/2013 11:56 PM, Jerry Leichter wrote:
> Which brings into the light the question: Just *why* have so many random number generators proved to be so weak.
Your three cases left off an important one: Not bothering to seed the
PRNG at all. I think the Java/Android cryptographic (!) library bug
that just came up was an instance of that.
I think the root of the problem is that programs are written, and bugs
squashed, until the program works. Maybe throw some additional testing
at it if we are being thorough, but then business pressures and boredom
says ship it.
That won't catch a PRNG that wasn't seeded, nor a hashed password that
wasn't salted, the unprotected URL, the SQL injection path, buffer
overflow, etc.
Computer security is design, implementation, and skepticism. But unless
you can sell it with a buzzword...
-kb
_______________________________________________
The cryptography mailing list
cryptography@metzdowd.com
http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
