Re: depleting the random number generator

[James A. Donald]

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At 04:45 PM 7/17/99 -0400, John Denker wrote:
> Step 2) The attacker endlessly iterates step 1.  This is easy. 
> AFAIK there  is no useful limit on how often new applications can be
> made.  This quickly  exhausts the entropy pool on Whitney.

The attacker can only "exhaust" the entropy pool if he can gain
information about the pool from the entropy he sees.  It is possible
to make this computationally very expensive.

Use a cryptographically strong PSEUDO random number generator, such as
RC4.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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     qn/WO267h5K7+VFcgal8DsOaJN3+dzOvBZD/PmS9
     42jjcrq29n9M22Y960CjYsXpYQ1gxdZCXa7PjMWDk