Updated: October 11, 2000
Unknown
Network Associates Security Advisory Date: May 30, 2000 Author: PGP Engineering Background: A security issue has been discovered in the following PGP products: PGP 5.0 for Linux, US Commercial and Freeware editions PGP 5.0 for Linux, Source code book (basis for PGP 5.0i for Linux) The following PGP products are NOT affected by this issue: PGP 1.x products PGP 2.x products PGP 4.x products All other PGP 5.x products PGP 6.x products PGP 7.x products Synopsis: During a recent review of our published PGP 5.0 for Linux source code, researchers discovered that under specific, rare circumstances PGP 5.0 for Linux will generate weak, predictable public/private keypairs. These keys can only be created under the following circumstances: Keys are generated using PGP's command line option for unattended batch key generation, with no user interaction for entropy (random data) collection No keys were generated interactively on this system previously (e.g., a PGP random seed file is not present on this system prior to unattended batch key generation) PGP is able to access the UNIX /dev/random service to gather entropy during unattended batch key generation PGP 5.0 for Linux does not process the data read from /dev/random appropriately, and therefore does not gather enough entropy required to generate strong public/private keypairs. This issue affects both RSA and Diffie-Hellman public/private keypairs, regardless of keysize. Network Associates has verified that this issue does not exist in any other version of PGP. Solution: Users who generated keys in the manner described above are strongly urged to do the following: Revoke and no longer use keys suspected to have this problem Generate new public/private keypairs with entropy collected from users' typing and/or mouse movements Re-encrypt any data with the newly generated keypairs that is currently encrypted with keys suspected to have this problem Re-sign any data with the newly generated keypairs, if required Users are also urged to upgrade to the latest releases of PGP, as PGP 5.0 products have not been officially supported by Network Associates since early 1999, or distributed by Network Associates since June 1998. Additional Information: US commercial and freeware versions of PGP 5.0 for Linux were released in September 1997 by PGP, Inc., a company founded by Phil Zimmermann. Source code for the PGP 5.0 product family was published in September 1997. PGP, Inc. was acquired by Network Associates in December 1997. Acknowledgements: PGP appreciates the efforts of Germano Caronni, Thomas Roessler and Marcel Waldvogel in identifying this issue and bringing it to our attention. A pgp signed version of this statement is also available at http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2000-09/pgp.asc
The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.
The CERT/CC has no additional comments at this time.
Updated: October 11, 2000
Affected
No statement is currently available from the vendor regarding this vulnerability.
The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.
The CERT/CC has no additional comments at this time.