A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
Title : Randomness Requirements for Security
Author(s) : Donald E. Eastlake
Steve Crocker
Charlie Kaufman
Jeffrey I. Schiller
Filename : draft-eastlake-randomness3-00.txt
Pages : 53
Date : 2013-11-05
Abstract:
Security systems are built on strong cryptographic algorithms that
foil pattern analysis attempts. However, the security of these
systems is dependent on generating secret quantities for passwords,
cryptographic keys, and similar values. The use of pseudo-random
processes to generate secret quantities can result in pseudo-
security. For example, the sophisticated attacker of these security
systems may find it easier to reproduce the environment that produced
the secret quantities, searching a resulting small set of
possibilities, than to locate the quantities in the whole of the
potential number space.
Choosing random quantities to foil a resourceful and motivated
adversary can be surprisingly difficult. This document points out
many pitfalls in using poor entropy sources or traditional pseudo-
random number generation techniques for generating such quantities.
It recommends the use of multiple sources with a strong mixing
function, so that no single source need be fully trusted, and
provides techniques for extending a random seed to a larger quantity
of pseudo-random material in a cryptographically secure way. And it
gives examples of how large such quantities need to be for some
applications. This document obsoletes RFC 4086.
The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-eastlake-randomness3
There's also a htmlized version available at:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-eastlake-randomness3-00
Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of submission
until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org.
Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
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