Security Review Summary of NIST SHA-3 Round 1

FormOfActionBanana writes "The security firm Fortify Software has undertaken an automated code review of the NIST SHA-3 round 1 contestants (previously Slashdotted) reference implementations. After a followup audit, the team is now reporting summary results. According to the blog entry, 'This just emphasizes what we already knew about C, even the most careful, security conscious developer messes up memory management.' Of particular interest, Professor Ron Rivest's (the "R" in RSA) MD6 team has already corrected a buffer overflow pointed out by the Fortify review. Bruce Schneier's Skein, also previously Slashdotted, came through defect-free."

Comments

Reference implementation

[rgmoore]

In a word, no. A reference implementation is supposed to be a working version of the code, not just a mathematical description. With a working version, it's possible to do things like test its real world performance or cut and paste directly into a program that needs to use the function. That's obviously only possible if you have a version that works on real-world processors.

Consider Skein as an example. One of the things that Bruce Schneier described as a major goal of its design is that it uses functions that are highly optimized in real-world processors. That means that it's possible to make a version that's both very fast and straightforward to program, an important criterion for low-powered embedded applications. You won't discover that kind of detail until you implement it.

uhh, lint...

[mevets]

$ cat bo.c
int a[3];
void f()
{
                a[3] = 1;
}

$ lint bo.c
bo.c:4: warning: array subscript cannot be > 2: 3

Lint is so basic, I can't imagine not using it....