Re: Initial entropy with no HWRNG

Taylor R Campbell <[email protected]> Tue, 12 May 2020 17:20:58 +0000
Newsgroups gmane.os.netbsd.devel.crypto
Message-ID <[email protected]>
> Date: Tue, 12 May 2020 13:05:01 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Mouse <[email protected]>
> 
> >> B1) Because they already got the binaries or the sources from us; we
> >> could simply tamper those to do the wrong thing instead.
> > Tampering is loud, but eavesdropping is quiet.  There is no way to do
> > this that is resistant to eavesdropping without a secret on the
> > client side.
> 
> Ironically, there is, from an algorithms perspective, the simplest
> perhaps being Diffie-Hellmann.  (D-H is as hard as discrete log, for
> passive eavesdroppers.  It's active MitM that it's not enough for.)
> The irony arises because, as far as I know, all such algorithms require
> randomness - or at least unpredictability to the attacker - on each
> end, making this a chicken-and-egg problem.
> 
> Or is that what you meant by "a secret"?

That is exactly what I meant by `a secret'.