[Cryptography] OpenSSL CSPRNG work

[Ray Dillinger]

On 07/03/2017 08:44 AM, Theodore Ts'o wrote:

> Yes, *please* look at the man pages.
> 
> HISTORY
>      These functions first appeared in OpenBSD 2.1.
> 
>      The original version of this random number generator used
>      the RC4 (also known as ARC4) algorithm.  In OpenBSD 5.5 it
>      was replaced with the ChaCha20 cipher, and it may be
>      replaced again in the future as cryptographic techniques
>      advance.  A good mnemonic is “A Replacement Call for
>      Random”.


This ... okay, I get it, because you want to leverage code that
was written to call a generator that turned out not to be secure.

But this still bothers me.  It takes a name that has a *known*
meaning, and uses it to mean something else.  It seems almost
like lying.

In this particular case, it is badly misleading.  I would absolutely
never have called a function named arc4random expecting to get a
cryptographic number generator. And I would never have looked at the man
page, because I know exactly what ARC4 means and I know that it
is NOT a cryptographic number generator.

We should have a better way of updating code when a CPRNG needs to
be downgraded.

					Bear


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/attachments/20170703/03d253b8/attachment.sig>