NODE 199c3316Re: Security Update news release
Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>Tue, 26 Sep 95 12:41:15 PDT
>>Do the new versions use PGP's randseed.bin? If Netscape even only looks at
>>data used to keep PGP secure, Netscape will be banned from my computer
>>and every computer I am responsible for. -- For good.
>
>This is the second person who has expressed this sentiment. I don't
>understand it. If you believe that the possibility of randseed.bin
>getting out is dangerous, then why do you leave it online? Do you
>really trust every piece of software you run, every piece of software
>that can possibly access your machine over the net, to not look at
>that file?
It makes a little bit of sense - I'm not aware of any software,
other than PGP and now Netscape, that _explicitly_ goes after randseed.bin,
though of course just about anything can try.
Assuming the code is inspectable (which it currently is), if I can
see that all it's going to do with the file is crunch it into MD5
along with a bunch of other stuff, I'm not too worried, even though
it is stealing slack(entropy) from PGP.
#---
# Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281
#---
NODE 9a9f7653Re: Security Update news release
jsw@neon.netscape.com (Jeff Weinstein)Wed, 27 Sep 95 15:28:27 PDT
In article <199509261941.MAA02266@ix6.ix.netcom.com>, stewarts@ix.netcom.com (Bill Stewart) writes:
> >>Do the new versions use PGP's randseed.bin? If Netscape even only looks at
> >>data used to keep PGP secure, Netscape will be banned from my computer
> >>and every computer I am responsible for. -- For good.
> >
> >This is the second person who has expressed this sentiment. I don't
> >understand it. If you believe that the possibility of randseed.bin
> >getting out is dangerous, then why do you leave it online? Do you
> >really trust every piece of software you run, every piece of software
> >that can possibly access your machine over the net, to not look at
> >that file?
>
> It makes a little bit of sense - I'm not aware of any software,
> other than PGP and now Netscape, that _explicitly_ goes after randseed.bin,
> though of course just about anything can try.
Netscape will not read randseed.bin. I've changed it to use an environment
variable that names a user specified file to read.
--Jeff
--
Jeff Weinstein - Electronic Munitions Specialist
Netscape Communication Corporation
jsw@netscape.com - http://home.netscape.com/people/jsw
Any opinions expressed above are mine.