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Luciano Bello discovered that the random number generator in Debian's openssl package is predictable. This is caused by an incorrect Debian-specific change to the openssl package (CVE-2008-0166). As a result, cryptographic key material may be guessable.
This is a Debian-specific vulnerability which does not affect other operating systems which are not based on Debian. However, other systems can be indirectly affected if weak keys are imported into them.
It is strongly recommended that all cryptographic key material which has been generated by OpenSSL versions starting with 0.9.8c-1 on Debian systems is recreated from scratch. Furthermore, all DSA keys ever used on affected Debian systems for signing or authentication purposes should be considered compromised; the Digital Signature Algorithm relies on a secret random value used during signature generation.
The first vulnerable version, 0.9.8c-1, was uploaded to the unstable distribution on 2006-09-17, and has since that date propagated to the testing and current stable (etch) distributions. The old stable distribution (sarge) is not affected.
Affected keys include SSH keys, OpenVPN keys, DNSSEC keys, and key material for use in X.509 certificates and session keys used in SSL/TLS connections. Keys generated with GnuPG or GNUTLS are not affected, though.
While this patch was never applied to the Mandriva OpenSSL package, it is possible that these weak keys or certificates exist on Mandriva systems. In particular, this could affect systems that provide SSH or VPN services to many users, some of which may be Debian or Ubuntu users, resulting in the possibility that these weak keys or certificates exist.
No update exists at mdv last time I checked today.
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I suggest this email could apply to other distro users as well.
regenerate and distribute any potentially vulnerable keys. Instructions for how to regenerate the keys for these applications are below. You can also test to see if keys are vulnerable using the dowkd.pl utility as described below.
I'm proceeding to unsticky this thread. Considering the unbelievable amount of coverage this issue received in the blogosphere and Debian mailing lists during the first week, any Debian system administrator who hasn't heard of this by now is probably living under a rock. Feel free to post any questions/comments related to this historically significant vulnerability, though.
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WARN: OpenSSL (Debian and Debian-based distros)
