Re: depleting the random number generator

[Ben Laurie]

David Honig wrote:
> 
> At 04:45 PM 7/17/99 -0400, John Denker wrote:
> >Hi Folks --
> >
> >I have a question about various scenarios for an attack against IPsec by way
> >of the random number generator.  The people on the linux-ipsec mailing list
> >suggested I bring it up here.
> 
> >>..worries that /dev/random exhaustion -> DoS, and /dev/urandom -> PRNG after
> exhaustion..
> 
> You are correct.  There is no way around this, except to add a true RNG
> to your server.  With an open source OS, you can add this to the existing
> /dev/[u]random code

That isn't a way around it, that just gives you higher speed randomness.

The obvious way to solve the underlying problem, as I've already said,
is to use hashcash.

Cheers,

Ben.

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