From owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Sep 19 07:57:25 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2AF0016A4B3 for ; Fri, 19 Sep 2003 07:57:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tenebras.com (blade.tenebras.com [66.92.188.175]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 2641743FD7 for ; Fri, 19 Sep 2003 07:57:22 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from kudzu@tenebras.com) Received: (qmail 98868 invoked from network); 19 Sep 2003 14:57:21 -0000 Received: from sapphire.tenebras.com (HELO tenebras.com) (192.168.188.241) by laptop.tenebras.com with SMTP; 19 Sep 2003 14:57:21 -0000 Message-ID: <3F6B1950.8090304@tenebras.com> Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 07:57:20 -0700 From: Michael Sierchio User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i386; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, zh-tw, zh-cn, fr, en, de-de MIME-Version: 1.0 Cc: freebsd-security@freebsd.org References: <200309190802.h8J82bfq006549@grimreaper.grondar.org> In-Reply-To: <200309190802.h8J82bfq006549@grimreaper.grondar.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: FreeBSD Security Advisory FreeBSD-SA-03:12.openssh] X-BeenThere: freebsd-security@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Security issues [members-only posting] List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 14:57:25 -0000 Mark Murray wrote: > In FreeBSD-5-* there is no separate /dev/urandom, and /dev/random is > driven by Yarrow (http://www.counterpane.com/yarrow/). This is a > PRNG+entropy-harvester, and it it _very_ conservative. As long as > _some_ entropy is being harvested, it is unlikely that either generator > wil produce a repeating sequence _ever_. Oh? I believe that, for any finite binary string, the probability of it appearing again approaches 1 as time goes on. Don't you? Question, since I haven't looked at the code -- does it honor the /dev/crypto interface? Since, if a HW RBG is included in a crypto device, it should be used to help stir the pot.