[13019] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Via puts RNGs on new processors
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frantz)
Fri Apr 11 11:20:51 2003
X-Original-To: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
In-Reply-To: <3E9469B6.6CFCAC56@systemics.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 16:23:59 -0700
To: iang@systemics.com, David Wagner <daw@mozart.cs.berkeley.edu>
From: Bill Frantz <frantz@pwpconsult.com>
Cc: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
At 11:43 AM -0700 4/9/03, Ian Grigg wrote:
>David Wagner wrote:
>> Do you worry about this for your CPU? If not, why should
>> the RNG component of your CPU be any different?
>
>I "worry" only mildly about this for the CPU. ...
The most credible CPU attack I have heard of (from Norm Hardy) is to have
two particular floating point operands cause the next instruction to be
executed in privileged mode. If these values occur in a normal program, it
won't notice that it had system control for one instruction. A Trojan
horse program can use it to get control of the machine.
Cheers - Bill
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