From owner-freebsd-current Mon Jul 17 23:25:32 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from cypherpunks.ai (cypherpunks.ai [209.88.68.47]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B0DE137BA4D; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 23:25:28 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jeroen@vangelderen.org) Received: from vangelderen.org (grolsch.ai [209.88.68.214]) by cypherpunks.ai (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2EA884D; Tue, 18 Jul 2000 02:25:27 -0400 (AST) Message-ID: <3973F857.1A59FCA@vangelderen.org> Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 02:25:27 -0400 From: "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.12 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Poul-Henning Kamp Cc: Alexander Langer , "Louis A. Mamakos" , Mark Murray , "Andrey A. Chernov" , current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: randomdev entropy gathering is really weak References: <6765.963898605@critter.freebsd.dk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > > In message <3973B66C.D6BD5BFD@vangelderen.org>, "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" writes > : > > >> Predicting the clock's offset from reality and the two way path to > >> the server of choice is impossible, plus if people enable authentication > >> later on the packets will be choke full of high-quality entropy. > > > >Please quantify 'impossible'. > > People have tried for 30+ years to predict what a quartz xtal > will do next. Nobody expects any chance of success. Add to this > the need to predict the difference between one or more NTP servers > and your local qartz xtal and I think we can safely say "impossible". See my reply to David Schwartz. What kind of numbers are we talking about? > >I think we first need to figure out the security implications. > > I think the security implications of having no entropy are much > worse than having entropy which a truly superhuman *maybe* could > guess *some* of the bits in, are far worse. I agree, but to paraphrase: that's policy decision. Just quantify it so that people can be their own judge. Cheers, Jeroen -- Jeroen C. van Gelderen o _ _ _ jeroen@vangelderen.org _o /\_ _ \\o (_)\__/o (_) _< \_ _>(_) (_)/<_ \_| \ _|/' \/ (_)>(_) (_) (_) (_) (_)' _\o_ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message