[gnutls-dev] Feature request: not really random session keys

Florian Weimer fw at deneb.enyo.de
Wed Jan 18 14:39:28 CET 2006


* Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos:

>> I would like to see an additional API which allows code to degrade
>> session key randomness to a mere PRNG (i.e. /dev/urandom instead of
>> /dev/random).  In a theoretical sense, this sacrifices Perfect Forward
>> Secrecy
>
> This is not really true. Only if you consider the /dev/urandom algorithms
> and the libgcrypt PRNG broken.

Yes, that's why I wrote "theoretical". 8-) I think it's completely
acceptable to use a PRNG (instead of a real RNG) for those session
keys.

What I don't understand is that you say you are already using the PRNG
source, and I find this hard to match with the source code and some
reports from the trenches.



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