JEP 123: SecureRandom First Draft and Implementation. (original) (raw)

Sean Mullan sean.mullan at oracle.com
Fri Jan 4 22:03:45 UTC 2013

Just some initial comments on the API. I have not looked at the code yet.

  1. getStrongSecureRandom says:

    • If the underlying SPI implementation does not support the
    • {@link SecureRandomSpi.engineSetStrongMode(boolean)
    • SecureRandomSpi.engineSetStrongMode(boolean)} method,
    • then a wrapper class will redirect SecureRandomSpi
    • calls from nextBytes() to generateSeed().

Can you explain in a bit more detail what this means? Is the SecureRandom object that is returned the same whether mode is true or false, even if the underlying implementation could be upgraded to support a strong mode?

  1. The name for the method getStrongMode seems a bit odd since it returns a boolean. How about isStrong instead?

  2. Nit: Use {@code} instead of

  3. Consider marking getStrongSecureRandom and getStrongMode final. I think the other methods on SecureRandom are not final because the SPI was added later, unlike other security SPI classes.

--Sean

On 01/02/2013 08:58 PM, Brad Wetmore wrote:

Hi, Please review the API/impl for JEP 123: http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/123 http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~wetmore/6425477/webrev.00/ Oracle folks, there is also the internal CCC that needs review. The bug id is 6425477. There are several SecureRandom implementations in Oracle's JDK, and together with the "configuration" options in the java.security file, it can be very confusing for users to understand. As part of the work on JEP 123, I took a comprehensive look at the different SecureRandom implementations and how we got here. There are these implementations: PKCS11: Direct calls to the native PKCS11 library. Only enabled by default on Solaris, but available for any OS. No difference between seed/random. NativePRNG: uses /dev/random and /dev/urandom for seeds/random numbers respectively. Doesn't exist on Windows. SHA1PRNG: Available on all platforms. By default, uses a confusing mix of /dev/[u]random for internal seeding and external seed generation, along with a SHA1 MessageDigest for generating random numbers. The properties (below) control seeding, but in a confusing manner. Windows-PRNG: Direct calls to the MSCAPI library, only available for Windows. No difference between seed/random. There were two main points for this JEP: 1. Provide an API that allows applications to indicate whether they want the "strongest-possible" (possibly blocking) values, or if just regular values will do. 2. See if we can clarify the configuration model, and eliminate some of the confusion caused by the securerandom.source/java.security.egd variables. This second point has caused a lot of pain for developers/deployers/support. The "workaround" of specifying "file:/dev/./urandom" or "file:///dev/urandom" instead of "file:/dev/urandom" has to be one of the most unintuitive ever. [1] ;) The default value of the variable is changed to file:/dev/random to reflect the actual implementation we've been shipping since JDK 5, but will also install NativePRNG as more preferred over the SHA1PRNG. Otherwise, the part of the implementation stays the same, and is now better documented in the java.security file. We'll also be updating the Oracle Provider documentation to reflect the implementations, but that work will be done later. Thanks, Brad [1] https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=3793101

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