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From: daw@taverner.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
Newsgroups: isaac.lists.linux-kernel
Subject: Re: Fortuna
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 21:40:37 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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Matt Mackall  wrote:
>On Sat, Apr 16, 2005 at 01:08:47AM +0000, David Wagner wrote:
>> http://eprint.iacr.org/2005/029
>
>Unfortunately, this paper's analysis of /dev/random is so shallow that
>they don't even know what hash it's using. Almost all of section 5.3
>is wrong (and was when I read it initially).

Yes, that is a minor glitch, but I believe all their points remain
valid nonetheless.  My advice is to apply the appropriate s/MD5/SHA1/g
substitution, and re-read the paper to see what you can get out of it.

The problem is not that the paper is shallow; it is not.  The source
of the error is likely that this paper was written by theorists, not
implementors.  There are important things we can learn from them, and I
think it is worth reading their paper carefully to understand what they
have to offer.

I believe they raise substantial and deep questions in their Section 5.3.
I don't see why you say Section 5.3 is all wrong.  Can you elaborate?
Can you explain one or two of the substantial errors you see?
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