[FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD Errata Notice FreeBSD-EN-14:01.random

[Peter Ankerstål]

On 15 Jan 2014, at 18:04, Darren Pilgrim <list_freebsd at bluerosetech.com> wrote:

> On 1/14/2014 12:11 PM, FreeBSD Errata Notices wrote:
>> III. Impact
>> 
>> Someone who has control over these hardware RNGs would be able to
>> predicate the output from random(4) and urandom(4) devices and may be able
>> to reveal unique keys that are used to encrypt data.
> 
> This is good to know, but I have to wonder:
> 
> If the attacker has that level of access to the hardware, I would expect one of two things is also true:
> 
> 1. If you're on "bare metal", the attacker has firmware-level or physical access to the machine;
> 2. If you're on a hypervisor, you can't trust the hypervisor;
> 
> In both cases, I would think the attacker can use much simpler, more direct vectors and you have much worse things to worry about than the quality of /dev/random.  I'm not questioning the validity of the advisory, I'm genuinely curious about this.  I can't think of a scenario were someone could attack /dev/random using this vector without 1 or 2 above also being true.
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The manufacturer of a good friend of the manufacturer interested in decrypting stuff.

/Peter.