Juniper: Recording Some Twitter Conversations
Stop and consider for a second how crazy this page is:<p><a href="https://kb.juniper.net/InfoCenter/index?page=content&id=KB28205&pmv=print&actp=LIST" rel="nofollow">https://kb.juniper.net/InfoCenter/index?page=content&id=KB28...</a><p>Dual_EC is a PKRNG. PKRNGs are a kind of crypto random number generator (CSPRNG). All the crypto keys in modern cryptosystems come from CSPRNGS.<p>PKRNGs are special because they embed a public key in the generator. Anyone who holds the corresponding private key can "decrypt" the output of the RNG and recover the generator's "state"; once they have that, they can fast-forward and rewind through it to find all the other numbers (read: crypto keys) it can generate.<p>Juniper is here saying that they recognize the problem of Dual_EC --- it's a PKRNG, and the USG may hold its private key.<p><i>So instead, they generated their own private keys and embedded them in the CSPRNGs of the VPNs they sold to customers</i>.<p>WAT?<p>But see also this thread:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10764359" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10764359</a>