On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 08:47:38AM +0200, Otto Moerbeek wrote: > On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 12:48:41AM +0200, chefren wrote: > > > On 5/13/08 7:08 PM, Marc Espie wrote: > > > >> More details show that someone seriously fucked up in debian. > > > > Well, this Kurt has seriously asked for details on the relevant openssl-dev > > list: > > > > http://marc.info/?l=openssl-dev&m=114651085826293&w=2 > > > > > > And see what "arrogant as usual" Ben Laurie states: > > > > http://www.links.org/?p=327 > > > > "they should contribute their patches upstream to the package maintainers. > > Had Debian done this in this case, we (the OpenSSL Team) would have fallen > > about laughing, and once we had got our breath back, told them what a > > terrible idea this was." > > > > > > Kurt has clearly done so, and I know personally of another totally ignored > > patch from our company and I have heard in the past about OpenBSD people > > trying to send patches to OpenSSL maintainers to no avail. > > > > The OpenSSL maintainers have proven not to read their mail, they aren't > > interested in cleaning up their big mess. > > > > > > Laurie also states "never fix a bug you dont understand" and this OpenSSL > > "hero" seems to forget that something that seems smart and OK now and here > > can be plain bad and ugly when looked at with some more distance or > > knowledge. > > > > His "Adding uninitialised memory to it can do no harm and might do some > > good, which is why we do it." is pure arrogant and shortsighted shit to me. > > > > +++chefren > > Of course it is wrong to /depend/ on uninitialized mem to stir a > random pool. Often "uninitialized" means lots of zeroes or predictable > stack contents. > > But the actual Debian diff that was committed removes any stirring, it > seems. From a quick view, no actual data from the passed in argument > is being used to stir the pool anymore. Now that is the real problem. > Because even if you have collected nice date with high entropy to seed > the PRNG, it will be ignored. > > The openssl-dev list did not spot that, and indeed, that is > disturbing. But Kurt never actually posted a diff there: so it's easy > for the two two sided to be talking about different things. > > As for the arrogance: i'm pretty sure openssl proper contains more > bugs. When I wrote our dc(1) (which uses the bignum lib from openssl) > that occurred whan adding 0 to a bignum A, which resulted in A not > being equal to the result. I was quite suprised that bug was never
Ehh, this part is missing something. What I meant to write: As for the arrogance: i'm pretty sure openssl proper contains bugs. When I wrote our dc(1) (which uses the bignum lib from openssl) I stumbled upon a bug that occurred when adding 0 to a bignum A, which resulted in A not being equal to the result. I was quite surprised that bug was never > found before. Probably crypto code only covers parts of the bignum > functionality. The handing of that bug was adequate, though. > > -Otto
