Secure64 Develops First Automated DNSSEC Signing Application to Help Secure the Internet Worldwide

2008-07-30 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler
Secure64 Develops First Automated DNSSEC Signing Application to Help Secure the Internet Worldwide http://www.businesswire.com/news/google/20080730005428/en from above: Secure64 Software Corporation has developed a product that dramatically simplifies the implementation and management of

Fw: FIPS 198-1 announcement

2008-07-30 Thread Steven M. Bellovin
Begin forwarded message: Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:36:36 -0400 From: Sara Caswell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: undisclosed-recipients:; Subject: FIPS 198-1 announcement The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is pleased to announce approval of Federal Information Processing

On the randomness of DNS

2008-07-30 Thread Ben Laurie
I thought this list might be interested in a mini-rant about DNS source port randomness on my blog: http://www.links.org/?p=352. Ever since the recent DNS alert people have been testing their DNS servers with various cute things that measure how many source ports you use, and how random they

Re: On the randomness of DNS

2008-07-30 Thread Ivan Krstić
On Jul 30, 2008, at 1:56 PM, Ben Laurie wrote: Oh, and I should say that number of ports and standard deviation are not a GREAT way to test for randomness. For example, the sequence 1000, 2000, ..., 27000 has 27 ports and a standard deviation of over 7500, which looks pretty GREAT to me.

Re: On the randomness of DNS

2008-07-30 Thread Pierre-Evariste Dagand
But just how GREAT is that, really? Well, we don' t know. Why? Because there isn't actually a way test for randomness. Your DNS resolver could be using some easily predicted random number generator like, say, a linear congruential one, as is common in the rand() library function, but

Re: On the randomness of DNS

2008-07-30 Thread Ben Laurie
Pierre-Evariste Dagand wrote: But just how GREAT is that, really? Well, we don' t know. Why? Because there isn't actually a way test for randomness. Your DNS resolver could be using some easily predicted random number generator like, say, a linear congruential one, as is common in the rand()

Re: On the randomness of DNS

2008-07-30 Thread Pierre-Evariste Dagand
I doubt you can get a large enough sample in any reasonable time. Indeed. I don't see the point of evaluating the quality of a random number generator by statistical tests. Which is entirely my point. I fear I was not clear: I don't see what is wrong in evaluating the quality of a random

Re: On the randomness of DNS

2008-07-30 Thread Ben Laurie
Pierre-Evariste Dagand wrote: I doubt you can get a large enough sample in any reasonable time. Indeed. I don't see the point of evaluating the quality of a random number generator by statistical tests. Which is entirely my point. I fear I was not clear: I don't see what is wrong in

Re: On the randomness of DNS

2008-07-30 Thread Hal Finney
Ben Laurie writes: Oh, and I should say that number of ports and standard deviation are not a GREAT way to test for randomness. For example, the sequence 1000, 2000, ..., 27000 has 27 ports and a standard deviation of over 7500, which looks pretty GREAT to me. But not very random. That's a

Re: On the randomness of DNS

2008-07-30 Thread Gregory Hicks
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:22:59 +0200 From: Pierre-Evariste Dagand [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Ben Laurie [EMAIL PROTECTED], cryptography@metzdowd.com Subject: Re: On the randomness of DNS [...] For sure, it would be better if we could check the source code and match the implemented RNG

Re: On the randomness of DNS

2008-07-30 Thread Dirk-Willem van Gulik
On 30 Jul 2008, at 19:57, Pierre-Evariste Dagand wrote: But just how GREAT is that, really? Well, we don' t know. Why? Because there isn't actually a way test for randomness. Your DNS resolver could be using some easily predicted random number generator like, say, a linear congruential

Re: On the randomness of DNS

2008-07-30 Thread Dirk-Willem van Gulik
On 30 Jul 2008, at 21:33, Ben Laurie wrote: For sure, it would be better if we could check the source code and match the implemented RNG against an already known RNG. But, then, there is a the chicken or the egg problem: how would you ensure that a *new* RNG is a good source of randomness ?