If you haven't heard about this, you need to. All Debian-based Linux systems, including Ubuntu, have a horrible problem in their crypto. This is so important that if you have a Debian-based system, stop reading this and go fix it, then come back to finish reading. In fact, unless you know you're safe, I'd take a look at updating your system anyway.

The problem is that they "fixed" the random number generator so that it doesn't generate random numbers, but a semi-fixed stream of pseudo-random bytes.

A friend of a friend is now working on generating the whole set of possible keys, and will release them to the world here. (Agree or not with this, but remember that the bad guys have them by now.)

Ben Laurie has written about it in gory detail here and here. If you want a summary, this problem comes about because the OpenSSL random number generator does some things that are unconventional, but not wrong. The unconventional coding was flagged by a code-analysis tool, and a Debian person removed it. That change made all randomness vanish from the random number generator.

Plenty of people have debated the whole thing. For example, there's the debate that says the Debian developer was an idiot, adn the people who say that the folks who did unconventional things were idiots.

I think that this is the sort of expected failure that happens in complex systems. I am reminded of code optimizers that see that a programmer clears a variable and then doesn't use it, so they optimize out the clearing, not realizing that that is erasing keys or passwords or whatever.

I'll add in that what leapt out at me was that the unconventional coding had an excessively vague comment noting that the analysis tool wouldn't like it. It would have been much better to have an over-the-top comment.

I was once notorious for a comment I had in some extremely hairy code that said something akin to:

This code is delicate. Don't modify it unless you understand it. If you think you understand it, you don't. I wrote it and I don't understand it.

That's what I meant by an over-the-top comment. I wanted the poor person who maintained my code to think three times. When you do something unconventional, you need to point out to the other developers in the ecosystem that you did what you did intentionally.

And for those of you who read the whole of this article before patching -- shoo. Go. Install that update. Now.

Photo "Random # 15 MSH" by Saffanna.