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Graphing Randomness in TCP Initial Sequence Numbers

Posted by michael on from the winning-lottery-numbers-in-there-somewhere dept.

Saint Aardvark writes "This is neat: Graphic visualization of how random TCP Initial Sequence Numbers really are for different OSs. It's a great way of seeing how secure a TCP stack really is. Cisco IOS is great; OS9, OpenVMS and IRIX aren't. Posted to the ever-lovin' BugTraq mailing list." This is a follow-up to the previous report.

3 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Already Slashdotted by Quixote · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The story's barely out on /. and its already slashdotted.

    /. story submission page should have a checkbox: "Please mirror the contents of this page (including graphics, which Google doesn't cache) before posting the story".

  2. 3rd parties don't have the authority by DrSkwid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Please could you violate the site's copyright before posting the story"

    although "please use server xxx.xxx as the proxy" for submissions could be a solution

    could even set up Apache to do that on a url therefore subtly circumventing the copyright problem, banners could be passed through.

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  3. Understanding Randomness by Nosher · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Lets face it: current computers and humans are both as bad as each other at randomness. The fact that computers have to "calculate" randomness is a bad sign in itself, and the humans that program these computers are almost utterly incapable of perceiving true randomness anyway. I'm waiting for the day when the national lottery comes up 1,2,3,4,5 with a bonus ball of 6. Society will crumble, public enquiries will be called for and conspiracy theorists will have something to bang on about for years. I think that barring the sudden development of Quantum x86 chips (at which point randomness becomes "real" and encryption becomes pretty much unbreakable), the only real solution for decent randomness must surely be TCP/IP seeding based on Lava Lamps

    --
    It's too late for me to die young