Fwd: [cryptography] Which encryption chips are compromised?

coderman coderman at gmail.com
Wed Dec 11 00:09:49 PST 2013


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: coderman <coderman at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 7:12 PM
Subject: Re: [cryptography] Which encryption chips are compromised?

On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 4:11 PM,  <dan at geer.org> wrote:
> ...
> For this to be an explicit line item in that document, it
> has to be special.  The two classes of "special" that occur
> to me are (1) XXXXXX has a near monopoly (like Broadcom
> does in its sector) or (2) XXXXXX is uniquely vulnerable to
> blackmail (a merchant with an export control problem, say).

you ask interesting questions Dan, and draw useful conclusions :)

some items to note:
- is this DUAL_EC_DRNG? don't think so. deadline is FY 2013.
- is this DUAL_EC_DRNG? the market for closed source, proprietary
crypto solutions is small (and growing smaller, :(
- is this XSTORE? it's been a while. but never should have been used
directly. see mtrngd with MSR bits set no whitening, max sample, max
freq. into mix + conservative estimate before /dev/random write.



> But in related news:
>
> Engineers abandon encryption chips after Snowden leaks
> http://rt.com/usa/snowden-leak-rng-randomness-019/

some cryptographers and cypherpunks have become despondent or dejected
or demoralized by these events.

i see a larger picture: never before have so many been doing crypto less wrong!

;P



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