[Cryptography] Mac OS 10.7.5 Random Numbers

[Bill Frantz]

On 2/2/14 at 9:34 PM, agr at me.com (Arnold Reinhold) wrote:

>Based on the Darwin source code posted at the xnu project, 
>Apple uses the SHA1 version of Yarrow with the 1999 source code 
>from Counterpane essentially unchanged. This give them a 
>160-bit secret state. An obvious improvement would be to switch 
>to SHA2 or SHA3 with a 256 or 512 bit state, but the Apple 
>source contains this warning:
>
>"THIS FILE IS NEEDED TO PASS FIPS ACCEPTANCE FOR THE RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR.
>IF YOU ALTER IT IN ANY WAY, WE WILL NEED TO GO THOUGH FIPS ACCEPTANCE AGAIN,
>AN OPERATION THAT IS VERY EXPENSIVE AND TIME CONSUMING. IN OTHER WORDS,
>DON'T MESS WITH THIS FILE."
>

Adding yet more evidence that FIPS standards work against 
improved security. I wonder how much NSA advice had to do with 
this situation.

Cheers - Bill

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