Re: [TLS] draft-sheffer-tls-bcp: DH recommendations

Patrick Pelletier <code@funwithsoftware.org> Mon, 23 September 2013 04:16 UTC

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Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 21:16:23 -0700
From: Patrick Pelletier <code@funwithsoftware.org>
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Subject: Re: [TLS] draft-sheffer-tls-bcp: DH recommendations
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On 9/22/13 6:04 AM, Ralph Holz wrote:

> I am still undecided on this issue. Heninger et al. have shown last year
> what can happen if you have poor entropy in your devices, and they also
> gave advice that programmers should not use the non-blocking RNG on
> Linux devices. Won't keep programmers from doing it. Similarly, I remain
> doubtful about EC implementations.

Possibly off-topic for TLS list, but: I don't think the answer is quite 
as simple as "use /dev/random" instead of "/dev/urandom".  The issue is 
only at boot time.  Once the system has been seeded with sufficient 
entropy, /dev/urandom is fine, because the entropy doesn't actually get 
"used up."  Search for "crying wolf" in the Heninger paper.

Perhaps the answer is to check the uptime, and use /dev/random if the 
system has been up for less than 3 (or 5, or something) minutes, and use 
/dev/urandom otherwise.

This has been discussed extensively in the "random vs urandom" thread on 
the randombit cryptography list last month.

--Patrick