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Intel In Bed with NSA?

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Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?

#11

Post by __alexs »

The comments about RdRand being impossible to verify because it's on-chip seem quite reasonable. (Although Intel have tried to be quite open about how it works. https://sites.google.com/site/intelrdrand/references)

I have no idea if RdRand is the only source of entropy for /dev/urandom in the kernel these days but that does seem quite silly. Especially as RdRand is documented as having two error conditions, not enough entropy, and that the hardware appears to be broken.

In any case, here's the LKML thread where it was merged too http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1173350

Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?

#12

Post by twoodfin »

lifeguard wrote: post #6
comex wrote: post #3

It 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 listen…

The NSA, working with IBM, also made DES more resistent to differential cryptanalysis, which was not widely understood at the time.

Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?

#13

Post by drivebyacct2 »

comex wrote: post #3

It 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…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6039028

Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?

#14

Post by stfu »

Would appreciate some sort of a summary. Reading some mile long email exchange just to figure out what the headline is really about makes it kinda tricky.

Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?

#15

Post by santosha »

lifeguard wrote: post #6
comex wrote: post #3

It 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 listen…

'I speculate that Rijndael is easier to brute force' On what basis?

Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?

#16

Post by obituary_latte »

__alexs wrote: post #11

The comments about RdRand being impossible to verify because it's on-chip seem quite reasonable. (Although Intel have tried to be quite open about how it works. https://sites.google.com/site/intelrdrand/references ) I have no idea if RdRand is the only source of entropy for /dev/urandom in the kernel these days but that does seem quite silly. Especially as RdRand is documented as having two error conditions, not enou…

>I have no idea if RdRand is the only source of entropy for /dev/urandom in the kernel these days but that does seem quite silly

If I understand correctly, the idea is to use RdRand to feed the entropy pool (which is also fed by other noise)[1] from which urandom pulls. So it doesn't seem RdRand would be the sole source of entropy if it were to be used in this context.

[1]http://linux.die.net/man/4/urandom

Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?

#17

Post by jpdoctor »

twoodfin wrote: post #12
lifeguard wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 listen…

The NSA, working with IBM, also made DES more resistent to differential cryptanalysis, which was not widely understood at the time.

> also made DES more resistent to differential cryptanalysis

Was that the result of the last-minute "black box" change? I never heard the result of that, so any light you shed would be welcome.

Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?

#18

Post by ReidZB »

santosha wrote: post #15
lifeguard wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 listen…

'I speculate that Rijndael is easier to brute force' On what basis?

Well, I guess Rijndael is "easier" to brute force in that it's faster than Twofish. But "easier" to brute force doesn't mean a whole lot; AES-192 is easier to brute force than AES-256, but both are so outside the realm of current-day computation than it doesn't really matter.

Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?

#19

Post by ReidZB »

jpdoctor wrote: post #17
twoodfin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA, working with IBM, also made DES more resistent to differential cryptanalysis, which was not widely understood at the time.

> also made DES more resistent to differential cryptanalysis Was that the result of the last-minute "black box" change? I never heard the result of that, so any light you shed would be welcome.

Correct. The NSA suggested changes in the DES S-boxes, which led to many questions. Ultimately, what was discovered is that their changes strengthened DES, not weakened it, as some had feared.

You can read more about their involvement here: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/16/how-were-the-de...

Re: Intel In Bed with NSA?

#20

Post by zdw »

lifeguard wrote: post #7
spindritf wrote: post #2

I 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.

Yeah, like when he worked for Transmeta, and that stint in the mid 200x's where a PowerPC64 was his main machine?

He may have a lot of Intel connections, but he doesn't seem to be committed to any specific vendor.

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