questions about RNGs and FIPS 140

[Thor Lancelot Simon]

On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 07:01:18PM +1200, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> 
> Yup, and if you look at some of the generators you'll see things like the use
> of a date-and-time vector DT in the X9.17/X9.30 generator, which was the
> specific example I gave earlier of sneaking in seeding via the date-and-time.
> Unfortunately one lab caught that and required that the DT vector really be a
> date and time, specifically the 64-bit big-endian output of time(), the
> Security 101 counterexample for how to seed an RNG.

That doesn't make any sense.  DT in that generator is really meant to
serve the role of a counter, and, in fact, the test harness for that
generator *requires* it to be a counter.

The seed for that generator is K.

Thor

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