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FreeBSD Developers Will Not Trust Chip-Based Encryption

Posted by Soulskill on from the fool-me-once,-shame-on-you dept.

New submitter srobert writes "An article at Ars Technica explains how, following stories of NSA leaks, FreeBSD developers will not rely solely on Intel's or Via's chip-based random number generators for /dev/random values. The values will first be seeded through another randomization algorithm known as 'Yarrow.' The changes are effective with the upcoming FreeBSD 10.0 (for which the first of three planned release candidates became available last week)."

6 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Very Smart Move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They have every reason NOT to trust the chips. Trust, but verify is always the correct way.

    1. Re:Very Smart Move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I take it you didn't even actually read what he said, then.

      Linus Torvalds responds:

      Where do I start a petition to raise the IQ and kernel knowledge of people?

      Guys, go read drivers/char/random.c. Then, learn about cryptography. Finally, come back here and admit to the world that you were wrong.

      Short answer: we actually know what we are doing. You don't.

      Long answer: we use rdrand as _one_ of many inputs into the random pool, and we use it as a way to _improve_ that random pool. So even if rdrand were to be back-doored by the NSA, our use of rdrand actually improves the quality of the random numbers you get from /dev/random.

      Really short answer: you're ignorant.

      TL;DR: Linux was NOT trusting chips and doing a variant of what FreeBSD plans to do now since quite a bit before.

  2. Re: what's that going to accomplish? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://www.schneier.com/yarrow-qa.html

    your ignorance is unjustifiable

  3. Re:Wise by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think it phones to this place. However some developers don't trust that random number generator and instead opt for this implementation.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  4. nine nine nine... by jakedata · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/

    That's the problem with randomness, you can never be sure.

  5. Re:Is there any way to gain trust in a chip? by tippe · · Score: 5, Funny

    Really? I just did this:

    $ cat /dev/random | xxd | head -n 10
    0000000: 414c 4c59 4f55 5242 4153 4541 5245 4245 ALLYOURBASEAREBE
    0000010: 4c4f 4e47 544f 5553 5448 414e 4b53 4652 LONGTOUSTHANKSFR
    0000020: 4f4d 5448 454e 5341 414c 4c59 4f55 5242 OMTHENSAALLYOURB
    0000030: 4153 4541 5245 4245 4c4f 4e47 544f 5553 ASEAREBELONGTOUS
    0000040: 5448 414e 4b53 4652 4f4d 5448 454e 5341 THANKSFROMTHENSA
    0000050: 414c 4c59 4f55 5242 4153 4541 5245 4245 ALLYOURBASEAREBE
    0000060: 4c4f 4e47 544f 5553 5448 414e 4b53 4652 LONGTOUSTHANKSFR
    0000070: 4f4d 5448 454e 5341 414c 4c59 4f55 5242 OMTHENSAALLYOURB
    0000080: 4153 4541 5245 4245 4c4f 4e47 544f 5553 ASEAREBELONGTOUS
    0000090: 5448 414e 4b53 4652 4f4d 5448 454e 5341 THANKSFROMTHENSA

    Maybe there's a pattern there; I'm not sure. I guess that's the problem with randomness: you can never be sure.