On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 12:12:03AM +1100, Mark Andrews wrote:
In message <199168.1381928361@turing-police.cc.vt.edu>, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu writes:
On Wed, 16 Oct 2013 18:50:29 +1100, Mark Andrews said:
* CPE generates a RSA key pair. Stores this in non-volatile memory. [needs to be coded, no protocol work required]
has proven to be a lot harder to do in the field than one might expect, due to the very limited amount of entropy sources available to a CPE that Joe Sixpack just pulled out of a Best Buy shopping bag. Witness the truly huge pile of CPE that generate horribly insecure weak self-signed certs for https. ...
Which is easily solvable when you design the CPE device to have good sources of hardware randomness. CPE devices are no longer just routers which shuffle packets. There are lots of activities that CPE deviced do that require good randomness and it only costs a couple of cents to add it the devices.
I'm sure the NSA would be happy to chip in to ensure that the best[0] possible source of randomness is available. - Matt [0] *Who* the decision is best for is left open to the imagination. -- Generally the folk who love the environment in vague, frilly ways are at odds with folk who love the environment next to the mashed potatoes. -- Anthony de Boer, in a place that does not exist