BCP 86, RFC 4086 on Randomness Requirements for Security

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        BCP 106
        RFC 4086

        Title:      Randomness Requirements for Security
        Author(s):  D. Eastlake, 3rd, J. Schiller, S. Crocker
        Status:     Best Current Practice
        Date:       June 2005
        Mailbox:    Donald.Eastlake@motorola.com, jis@mit.edu,
                    steve@stevecrocker.com
        Pages:      48
        Characters: 114321
        Obsoletes:  1750
        See Also:   BCP 106

        I-D Tag:    draft-eastlake-randomness2-10.txt

        URL:        ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc4086.txt

Security systems are built on strong cryptographic algorithms that
foil pattern analysis attempts.  However, the security of these
systems is dependent on generating secret quantities for passwords,
cryptographic keys, and similar quantities.  The use of pseudo-random
processes to generate secret quantities can result in pseudo-security.
A sophisticated attacker may find it easier to reproduce the
environment that produced the secret quantities and to search the
resulting small set of possibilities than to locate the quantities in
the whole of the potential number space.

Choosing random quantities to foil a resourceful and motivated
adversary is surprisingly difficult.  This document points out many
pitfalls in using poor entropy sources or traditional pseudo-random
number generation techniques for generating such quantities.  It
recommends the use of truly random hardware techniques and shows that
the existing hardware on many systems can be used for this purpose.
It provides suggestions to ameliorate the problem when a hardware
solution is not available, and it gives examples of how large such
quantities need to be for some applications.

This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the
Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

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Joyce K. Reynolds and Sandy Ginoza
USC/Information Sciences Institute

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