NIST reopens draft recommendation on random number generation for comment [pdf]

Re:NIST reopens draft recommendation on random number genera... by anologwintermut on Tuesday September 10, 2013 @11:38PM (#6365381)

Prior to this(or maybe Crypto 2007 where the suspicions were first aired), would you have have batted an eye if you saw Dual_EC_DRBG in a code base with some configuration bit for which NIST RNG you used?

Messing with the standard gets a backdoored RNG onto almost every system. Now NSA just has to convince companies to use it( and it's a NIST standard, so the company has some deniability) or surreptitiously swap it out.

Microsoft's CNG api has a default random number generator. How hard would it be to detect if that default was switched to BCRYPT_RNG_DUAL_EC_ALGORITHM for say, all windows copies sent to Iran or China?

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Re:NIST reopens draft recommendation on random number genera... by tptacek on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @12:30AM (#6365520)

I wouldn't have batted an eye, no. But that's not my point; what makes it weird isn't how poorly the "trojan" was hidden, but in what a pointless place it was hidden.

The "backdoor Chinese Windows" idea is plausible, though.

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