In [EMAIL PROTECTED], on 04/29/99
at 03:40 PM, Anonymous [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
William H. Geiger III writes:
One has to wonder if this is the actions of a company that is trustworthy
enough to supply RNG's to the community. IMHO it is not and I sincerely
hope support for the PIII is *not* included in /dev/random and/or IPSEC. I
will not be adding any support code in my software.
He quotes John Markoff's story in the New York Times:
Earlier this month, an Intel executive called executives at the Symantec
Corporation, maker of the popular Norton Antivirus software, and told them
that the demonstration program was "hostile code."
Symantec agreed that the program fit its definition of a type of malicious
program known as a Trojan horse, so it included the software in its
continually updated list of dangerous programs, which include viruses,
that cause warnings to pop up on its customers' computers.
In fact, this is perfectly reasonable on the part of Symantec, and if I
had a PIII I would absolutely want my virus detection software to catch
code which enables the serial number. Any such action on the part of
downloaded code is malicious and not in my interests, and anything the
software can do to prevent it is good.
This sets a precedent that code which reads the serial number contrary to
the user's wishes is hostile. This should help dissuade over-eager
software registration programs from using the serial number in their
registration process. No antivirus software can detect all programs
which try to read the serial number, but by making clear that such
actions are antisocial it will help restrict its use.
Granted, it would be better if the serial number didn't exist at all (but
of course we know that network interface cards have always had serial
numbers, don't we?). And it would be better if Intel's method of turning
off the serial number worked right. But given that it does exist in a
family of processors which will probably be widely used (ineffectual
boycotts to the contrary), users do benefit by having unauthorized serial
number programs be detected and identified as dangerous.
No, all this does is set the precedent of a major corporation flexing it's
muscle in an attempt to silence those who would expose their lies. This is
a typical case of corporate CYA and I am appalled by it. Do you honestly
think that Symantec is going to list any Microsoft products as a virus
when they covertly turn on this feature?
As far as ineffectual boycotts, I am not asking for the software not to
run on a P-III, I am asking that specific support for the P-III RNG not be
added. I don't think requiring Intel to shape up if they want to be
players in the crypto community is a Badthing(TM).
[Personally, given how bad the random number sources are in most
software, I'd say you are not doing your users a service. --Perry]
Of course Perry is absolutely right. The Intel RNG can provide a badly
needed source of randomness. The real problems are first, as was pointed
out here yesterday, Intel has not documented how to read the RNG (and is
apparently only supplying that information to partners like RSA and
Microsoft). And second, how should we count the entropy added by the
RNG. Here is where the trust issue comes into play. If it is really a
good RNG we can count every bit as a bit of entropy. If we don't trust
it, we can use the RNG data but not count entropy from it at all. Or we
could split the difference and "semi" trust Intel, counting only some
fraction of the nominal entropy provided by the RNG source.
So we should just blindly use a RNG of unknown properties from an
untrustworthy company? What will happen next when the P-IV has built in
crypto module (it is the next logical step)? Yes many programs have bad
random sources, many programs have bad crypto period. I don't use them and
I don't support them, plain and simple. I have to reiterate my original
statement from the /dev/random thread that I started:
"I have specific concerns, the #1 of which is that no analysis of this
program has been done!! If this was a crypto algorithm and one was to use
it without any analysis of it but only because "it came with the OS" one
would be severely chastised by the community. Unfortunately I am seeing
too many programmers blindly using /dev/(u)random on this very basis. I am
not saying it is a bad program, I am not saying it is a good program, I am
saying it is an unknown, and with something as important as one's random
number pool IMNSHO an unknown is not acceptable."
Here we have a RNG on unknown properties and yet there is already those
who wish to blindly rush out and uses it. You really should know better.
--
---
William H. Geiger III http://www.openpgp.net
Geiger ConsultingCooking With Warp 4.0
Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
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