Intel In Bed with NSA?
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Intel In Bed with NSA?
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Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?
#2I upvoted but the current title ("Is Linus Tovalds 'evil'?") is downright horrible and I hope a mod will revert it to the original one soon.
Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?
#3It is really, really hard for me to see this as anything other than utter paranoia. As one of the messages in the thread stated:
> Right. How exactly would you backdoor an RNG so (a) it could be effectively used by the NSA when they needed it (e.g. to recover Tor keys), (b) not affect the security of massive amounts of infrastructure, and (c) be so totally undetectable that there'd be no risk of it causing a ststorm that makes the $0.5B FDIV bug seem like small change (not to mention the legal issues, since this one would have been inserted deliberately, so we're probably talking bet-the-company amounts of liability there).
Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?
#4Intersting discussion, but incredibly bad title.
Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?
#5God says...
envious health-giving afterward -not words Whereupon err
equably proffering delightsome itch Panama hung Gospel
long travailed showing save scoffing wizard content Ivory_Coast
Deceased Book Vindicianus preparest sacrificing dares
rottenness sheep idly Seeing corruptions Homer's plainly
weeps vengeance pastime distraction guessed 1921 ceasest
apprehended remaineth ardently Firmament
Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?
#6It is really, really hard for me to see this as anything other than utter paranoia. As one of the messages in the thread stated: > Right. How exactly would you backdoor an RNG so (a) it could be effectively used by the NSA when they needed it (e.g. to recover Tor keys), (b) not affect the security of massive amounts of infrastructure, and (c) be so totally undetectable that there'd be no risk of it causing a s tstorm…
Well, it is documented that the NSA made DES weaker by using less bits for key size (this makes brute forcing easier). I aslo noted that Schiener's AES submission was passed over (I speculate that Rijndael is easier to brute force).
The feds used to fight civilian crypto tooth and nail. Then they allowed it, and in one of the crypto books a story was related that the feds were bummed about RSA and friends. The listener questioned why, when surely their efforts were feeble compared to the government's. The response was the pace of development was much faster than expected.
Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?
#7I upvoted but the current title ("Is Linus Tovalds 'evil'?") is downright horrible and I hope a mod will revert it to the original one soon.
Linus is (was?) one of my living heroes. But he controls the Linux kernel.
FTA:
"It's worth noting that the maintainer of record (me) for the Linux RNG quit the project about two years ago precisely because Linus decided to include a patch from Intel to allow their unauditable RdRand to bypass the entropy pool over my strenuous objections. " -- Eugen* Leitl
Linus has close ties to Intel and has for a long time.
Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?
#8Intersting discussion, but incredibly bad title.
I was trying to be concise. I also put quotes around evil.
Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?
#9Hanlon's razor help in this kind of discussions. Maybe when Linus took that option didn't saw Intel as something that would intentionally make predictable its RNG for following government orders, and just choose to not reimplement the wheel where it was already available.
Would he take another option since last month? Maybe in the light of this he could take back that choice.