Re: /dev/random on Linux

[Kyle Moffett <mrmacman_g4@mac.com>]

On May 16, 2006, at 04:28, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
> On Tue, May 16, 2006 at 04:15:19AM -0400, Kyle Moffett wrote:
> > On May 15, 2006, at 22:50, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
> > > On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 11:41:07PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> > > > A paper by people who can't work out how to mail linux-kernel or  
> > > > vendor-sec, or follow "REPORTING-BUGS" in the source,
> > >
> > > Zvi did contact Matt Mackall, the current /dev/random maintainer,  
> > > and was very keen on discussing the paper with him. I don't think  
> > > he got any response.
> >
> > So he's demanding that one person spend time responding to his paper?
>
> Who said anything about demanding? he wanted to discuss the paper.  
> He received no response (AFAIK). Please don't read more into it.

Pardon; my wording was overly harsh, but I still want to point out  
that assuming an unresponsive MAINTAINERS entry indicates that the  
person doesn't care is totally wrong.  Given the volume of email a  
lot of these people receive, it's very easy for it to go unnoticed or  
be trapped by a spam filter.  Publishing to the LKML is virtually  
always OK; even if you have a security problem, the average  
turnaround for "critical" security fixes like theoretical local root  
exploits is around 24 hours or so.  We went through about 8 stable  
"releases" over the course of a little more than a week because of  
several fairly urgent security fixes during that time.

> > The "maintainer" for any given piece of the kernel is the entry in  
> > MAINTAINERS *and* linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org *and* the  
> > appropriate sub-mailing-list.
>
> For security related information, it is sometimes best not to tell  
> the whole world about it immediately (although you should  
> definitely tell the whole world about it eventually). It should've  
> probably been posted to lkml when mpm didn't respond, I agree. I'll  
> take the blame for not suggesting that to Zvi.

As I said above, even the LKML is probably ok if you think you've  
found an actual explot.  If you really feel nervous about exposing  
it, I believe there's a security@kernel.org email where you can send  
such information which will even tenatively agree to a coordinated  
disclosure if you can prove that it's an urgent security problem.

Cheers,
Kyle Moffett

--
Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming
  -- C.A.R. Hoare



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