4 ms·

There are some good points here, but it's a bit over the top. For example: "NIST is considered harmful". Have you seen the latest NIST SP 800-63-3 on authentic

There are some good points here, but it's a bit over the top. For example: "NIST is considered harmful". Have you seen the latest NIST SP 800-63-3 on authentication? There was a public comment phase, the whole thing is hosted on github and it has deprecated the whole "your password must contain uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, special characters (but not single quotes as our database doesn't like that) and a haiku" nonsense - the only remaining recommended password restrictions are minimum length and check against a blacklist of common passwords. Dual EC is considered harmful, and perhaps in a more general sense closed standards and unexplained constants in crypto algorithms. Whether the label NIST is on something or not makes very little difference (or are you going to tell me next that AES is insecure because the US government approved it)? And this is the kind of thing that makes my hair stand up: "The hash function SHA1(SHA2(x)) is just as secure as SHA2 (it has less bits of course but no better attacks)." Yes, I know what you mean, but you've just given us a lecture on why key length matters. That said, there are some good recommendations here for setting SSH up securely. Meanwhile I still have to deal with a server that shall remain unnamed and that truncates passwords to the first 8 bytes ... sigh

api 8y ago
The Dual EC gambit struck me as very clumsy and ham fisted. The "number theory in your PRNG" argument is exactly wrong in an obvious way too, especially when you consider quantum computing. Did they really think nobody would notice an obviously keyable PRNG?
Spooky23 8y ago
This is just a fact of life for bloggers passionate about this topic — you get this kind of baggage.
heroprotagonist 8y ago
I remember old versions of AIX which would do that. It was surprising given the expense and almost exclusively corporate nature of it. They eventually fixed it, but the way a lot of them were used, they could sit years waiting for an update. I saw one (not ours, thankfully) with ~1200+ days uptime. I bet there are still a few out there that haven't been upgraded sinced they fixed it in 2007.

api 8y ago

The Dual EC gambit struck me as very clumsy and ham fisted. The "number theory in your PRNG" argument is exactly wrong in an obvious way too, especially when you consider quantum computing. Did they really think nobody would notice an obviously keyable PRNG?

Spooky23 8y ago

This is just a fact of life for bloggers passionate about this topic — you get this kind of baggage.

heroprotagonist 8y ago

I remember old versions of AIX which would do that. It was surprising given the expense and almost exclusively corporate nature of it. They eventually fixed it, but the way a lot of them were used, they could sit years waiting for an update. I saw one (not ours, thankfully) with ~1200+ days uptime. I bet there are still a few out there that haven't been upgraded sinced they fixed it in 2007.