Re:The strange story of “Extended Random”
by weinzierl on Saturday December 23, 2017 @05:03PM
(#15996501)
Do these printers use Dual_EC_DRBG too (in addition to Extended Random), to make them
actually vulnerable?
> Ironically, the printers are now the only thing that still exhibits the features of this (now deprecated) version of BSAFE. This is not because the NSA was targeting printers. Whatever devices they were targeting are probably gone by now. It’s because printer firmware tends to be obsolete and yet highly persistent. It’s like a remote pool buried beneath the arctic circle that preserves software species that would otherwise vanish from the Internet.
Pretty chilling, but on the other hand:
If this was true it should be possible to prove digging through firmware archives and
actually finding these targeted devices.
> Ironically, the printers are now the only thing that still exhibits the features of this (now deprecated) version of BSAFE. This is not because the NSA was targeting printers. Whatever devices they were targeting are probably gone by now. It’s because printer firmware tends to be obsolete and yet highly persistent. It’s like a remote pool buried beneath the arctic circle that preserves software species that would otherwise vanish from the Internet.
Pretty chilling, but on the other hand: If this was true it should be possible to prove digging through firmware archives and actually finding these targeted devices.