On Mon, May 13, 2019 at 08:06:37PM +0800, Weilong Chen wrote:
> On 2019/5/13 19:49, Michal Kubecek wrote:
> > One idea is that there may be applications using current time as a seed
> > for random number generator - but then such application is the real
> > problem, not having correct time.
> > 
> Yes, the target computer responded to an ICMP timestamp request. By
> accurately determining the target's clock state, an attacker can more
> effectively attack certain time-based pseudorandom number generators (PRNGs)
> and the authentication systems that rely on them.
> 
> So, the 'time' may become sensitive information. The OS should not leak it
> out.

So you are effectively saying that having correct time is a security
vulnerability?

I'm sorry but I cannot agree with that. Seeding PRNG with current time
is known to be a bad practice and if some application does it, the
solution is to fix the application, not obfuscating system time.

Michal Kubecek

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