On Jan 8, 2007, at 9:53 AM, RW wrote:
Someone recently recommended sysutils/pwgen for generating user
passwords. Out of curiosity I had a look at how it works, and I don't
like the look of its PRNG initialization:
#ifdef RAND48
srand48((time(0)<<9) ^ (getpgrp()<<15) ^ (getpid()) ^ (time(0)
>>11));
#else
srand(time(0) ^ (getpgrp() << 8) + getpid());
#endif
If pwgen is called from an account creation script, time(0) can be
inferred from timestamps, e.g. on a home-directory, so that just
leaves
getpid() and getpgrp(). PIDs are allocated sequentially and globally,
so getpid() is highly predictable. I don't know much about getpgrp(),
but from the manpage it doesn't appear to be any better.
Unless getpgrp() is a better source of entropy than I give it credit
for, I think this port should perhaps be marked as vulnerable.
It's not spectacular looking at that output, but it seems like a
typical hash.
As long as getpgrp() and getpid() don't always fall in the same range
(thus producing the same sets of numbers) and getpid() doesn't return
a multiple of getpgrp() << 8, I don't see any particular problems
with the above setup.
pwgen would do better on a system with a lot more processes though,
or one that's been up longer though, since PIDs increase over time.
-Garrett
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