From owner-freebsd-current Wed Aug 2 13:38:41 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from alcanet.com.au (mail.alcanet.com.au [203.62.196.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 50AB537BF17; Wed, 2 Aug 2000 13:38:31 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jeremyp@pc0640.alcatel.com.au) Received: by border.alcanet.com.au id <115235>; Thu, 3 Aug 2000 06:35:33 +1000 From: Peter Jeremy Subject: Re: randomdev entropy gathering is really weak In-reply-to: <3983BC3E.B100117D@vangelderen.org>; from jeroen@vangelderen.org on Sun, Jul 30, 2000 at 01:25:18AM -0400 To: "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" Cc: Brian Fundakowski Feldman , current@FreeBSD.ORG, Mark Murray , Kris Kennaway Message-Id: <00Aug3.063533est.115235@border.alcanet.com.au> MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii References: <3983BC3E.B100117D@vangelderen.org> Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 06:35:31 +1000 Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sun, Jul 30, 2000 at 01:25:18AM -0400, Jeroen C. van Gelderen wrote: >Hmm, maybe the complainers should provide proof that they do >need more than 2^256 complexity. Makes it easier for us, >proponents ;-/ How about creating one-time pads? That said, in Applied Cryptography, Schneier makes the comment (end of section 7.1) that, based on thermodynamic limitations, "brute force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are build from something other than matter and occupy something other than space". (Though it's possible that a quantum computer would meet those criteria - since it doesn't need to iterate through all possible keys, it can bypass that part of the second law of thermodynamics). This implies that if brute force is the best attack against Yarrow-256 (Blowfish), it is unbreakable. (Of course, that's a big if). Peter To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message