Package: apg Version: 2.2.3.dfsg.1-5+b2 Severity: normal Tags: security
Hey. I was thinking about a number of security concernts, and since I'm no expert, maybe someone else has an idea: 1) Attack on pronouncable passwords? Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_password_generator#Stronger_methods I've stumbled over: Ganesan, Ravi; Davies, Chris (1994). "A New Attack on Random Pronounceable Password Generators" http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/history/nissc/1994-17th-NCSC-proceedings-vol-1.pdf and http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/nicolasc/publications/Shay-SOUPS12.pdf The former seems to be an attack on what I guess apg is dowing when -a 0? So maybe, if that is real, one should warn against using -a 0? 2) Are symbolls well distributed? The following is really absolutely NOT solid, and probably just stupid perception of mine For many years now I've used: APG_PARM="-c /dev/urandom -a 1 -M SNCL -m 32 -x 32" and I kinda always had the impression that special symbols are way over-represented, e.g. 6^20:#;$0dZw7%AWM{@rVX']TK2q3(kX IHxb*Yse?^@Kx[kZhxJp;4nOPCRxfhe( ty%'a}U{+A)@>r|4;_#$yP^9[ZVXLTN< 5Fz_0.&_rK2+[3vBC0IRODQD5B]M#T9u m#_dRg@x@)\mgbbz57,.||(!g5D`R={d ++4v%Ozl3Ae[e<y0|;W^\\!*zjzW@iFY I had a *very brief* look over the code and couldn't find anything obvious, that would cause troubles in the random distribution, but again it was *very brief* and I'm all but an expert. I tried to do some poor-man testing via something like: apg -n 10000 -a 1 -M SNCL -m 32 -x 32 | sed "s/\(.\)/\1\n/g" | sort | uniq -c | sort -k 2 But that seems to show that each symbol gets a similar share when the numbers are large enough. So probably my whole point (2) is rubbish, anyway, some expert may have more insight. Cheers, Chris.
