Re: 1280-Bit RSA

2010-07-12 Thread James A. Donald
On 2010-07-11 10:11 AM, Brandon Enright wrote: > On Fri, 9 Jul 2010 21:16:30 -0400 (EDT) Jonathan > Thornburg wrote: > >> The following usenet posting from 1993 provides an >> interesting bit (no pun itended) of history on RSA key >> sizes. The key passage is the last paragraph, asserting >> tha

Re: Intel to also add RNG

2010-07-12 Thread Eric Murray
On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 03:37:45PM -0400, Paul Wouters wrote: > On Mon, 12 Jul 2010, Eric Murray wrote: > >> Then there's FIPS- current 140 doesn't have a provision for HW RNG. >> They certify software RNG only, presumeably because proving a HW RNG to be >> random enough is very difficult. So wha

Re: Intel to also add RNG

2010-07-12 Thread Paul Wouters
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010, Eric Murray wrote: Then there's FIPS- current 140 doesn't have a provision for HW RNG. They certify software RNG only, presumeably because proving a HW RNG to be random enough is very difficult. So what's probably the primary market (companies who want to meet FIPS) isn't

Re: Anyone make any sense out of this skype hack announcement?

2010-07-12 Thread Steve Furlong
> I don't know if the new crack reveals anything new. We have > a writeup about the Skype protection techniques in > "Surreptitious Software", our book on security-through-obscurity. > (Sorry for the blatant self-promotion). I appreciate the self-promotion. My only request is that you include ISBN

Re: Intel to also add RNG

2010-07-12 Thread Paul Wouters
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010, Ben Laurie wrote: On 2 July 2010 13:19, Eugen Leitl wrote: http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=25670&channel=Briefings§ion=Microprocessors Tuesday, June 29, 2010 Nanoscale Random Number Circuit to Secure Future Chips Intel unveils a circuit

Fwd: Anyone make any sense out of this skype hack announcement?

2010-07-12 Thread Christian Collberg
The skype client was reverse engineered several years ago: @inproceedings{biondi06silver,   title = {Silver Needle in the Skype},   author = {Philippe Biondi and Fabrice Desclaux},   note = "\url{www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-europe-06/bh-eu-06-biondi/bh-eu-06-biondi-up.pdf}",   booktitle = {

Re: Intel to also add RNG

2010-07-12 Thread Nicolas Williams
On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 01:13:10PM -0400, Jack Lloyd wrote: > I think it's important to make the distinction between trusting Intel > not to have made it actively malicious, and trusting them to have > gotten it perfectly correct in such a way that it cannot fail. > Fortunately, the second problem,

Re: Intel to also add RNG

2010-07-12 Thread Eric Murray
On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 12:22:51PM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > Plugging in an > external unit is not going to happen in practice. If it isn't nearly > free and built in, it won't be used. I completely agree. But HW RNGs are a pain in a lot of ways- modern chip design libraries don't include

Re: Anyone make any sense out of this skype hack announcement?

2010-07-12 Thread Tom McGhan
According to Steve Gibson, on his "Security Now!" podcast, episode 0x0100: http://wiki.twit.tv/wiki/Security_Now_256 the supposed hack was a case of reverse engineering to reproduce the internal keys and initialization vectors needed to build a Skype-compatible client, and not a break of RC4 per

Re: Intel to also add RNG

2010-07-12 Thread Jack Lloyd
On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 12:22:51PM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > BTW, let me note that if Intel wanted to gimmick their chips to make > them untrustworthy, there is very little you could do about it. The > literature makes it clear at this point that short of carefully > tearing apart and analy

Re: Intel to also add RNG

2010-07-12 Thread Matt Crawford
On Jul 12, 2010, at 11:22 AM, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > The > literature makes it clear at this point that short of carefully > tearing apart and analyzing the entire chip, you're not going to catch > subtle behavioral changes designed to allow attackers backdoor > access. I happen to be re-read

Re: Intel to also add RNG

2010-07-12 Thread Perry E. Metzger
On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:58:51 +1200 Peter Gutmann wrote: > Ben Laurie writes: > >On 2 July 2010 13:19, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >> > >>http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=25670&channel=Briefings§ion=Microprocessors > >> > >>Tuesday, June 29, 2010 > >> > >>Nanoscale Random

Re: Intel to also add RNG

2010-07-12 Thread Peter Gutmann
Ben Laurie writes: >On 2 July 2010 13:19, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> >>http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=25670&channel=Briefings§ion=Microprocessors >> >>Tuesday, June 29, 2010 >> >>Nanoscale Random Number Circuit to Secure Future Chips >> >>Intel unveils a circuit that

Re: Intel to also add RNG

2010-07-12 Thread Richard Salz
> Have they forgotten the enormous amount of suspicion last time they > tried this? More likely they're expecting everyone else to have forgotten about being suspicious. /r$ -- STSM, WebSphere Appliance Architect https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/soma/

Re: Intel to also add RNG

2010-07-12 Thread Ben Laurie
On 2 July 2010 13:19, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=25670&channel=Briefings§ion=Microprocessors > > Tuesday, June 29, 2010 > > Nanoscale Random Number Circuit to Secure Future Chips > > Intel unveils a circuit that can pump out truly random