A nice addition to any Netscape RNG hacks is the comment that, while Netscape may have a bug in their RNG, it's detectable and fixable; the NSA may have a BUG in theirs, and only they'll know for sure...
Yes Fortezza cards can be instructed to produce a random number through one of its library calls (someday they'll have a real API). One of the diagnostic tools I had tested this function. What algorithm do they use? Haven't a clue. Sources say that the RNG implementation may vary from vendor to vendor (i.e., GTC, Spyrus, Mykotronix, etc.).
John Gilmore's comments on CAPSTONE, subliminal channels, and FOIA blackouts certainly add depth to this suspiciousness. I'd initially not been too worried about the Fortezza (besides the obvious Master Key problems) because the NSA is letting the military use them for Defense Messaging Service. However, if the RNG might be different for different vendors, the non-military versions may be using a weak RNG, which the NSA has a backdoor to. Alternatively, the RNGs may all be the same, but there may be an option that the military can use to get full-strength random numbers while the public, not knowing this, gets weakened ones (e.g. the first n bits of the RNG may be random, and the next N-n bits may be a strong hash, while there are N-n real random bits in another register if you ask for them nicely.) On a technical note, I would have thought that Fortezza and/or CAPSTONE used some sort of hardware RNG, i.e. noisy Zener diodes or whatever. I've seen it mentioned on this list that some other NSA secure phones, such as STU-III, do that. #--- # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---