Re: [Monotone-devel] [Fwd: [SECURITY] [DSA 1571-1] New openssl packages fix predictable random number generator]

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 09:16:28AM +1000, Brian May wrote:
> Zack Weinberg wrote:
> > It occurred to me that monotone does have the ability to load signing
> > keys into ssh-agent, which might have meant they got used with the bad
> > random number generator; but monotone only uses RSA keys, so as I
> > understand it that's not a problem.
> >   
> What matters is how the key is initially generated. So monotone should
> be OK, even with ssh-agent. However both RSA and DSA keys (ssh, x509,
> etc) are affected by the above security flaw when the key was generated
> by the bad library.

Apparently strong DSA keys can also be compromised if they are *used*
by a broken library, because of how random nonces are used in
generating DSA signatures.  But it doesn't matter, like Zack says.

-- Nathaniel

-- 
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways.