Signatures and Ciphers that need random values

Steve Burnett (burnettS@RSA.COM)
Wed, 7 May 1997 11:09:34 -0700

Message-Id: <c=US%a=_%p=RSA_Data_Securit%l=LOBESTER-970507180934Z-2936@LOBESTER.rsa.com>
From: Steve Burnett <burnettS@RSA.COM>
To: "'JavaSoft crypto questions'" <java-security@web2.javasoft.com>
Subject: Signatures and Ciphers that need random values
Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 11:09:34 -0700

When computing a DSA signature, I need to generate a random value
(generally called k). If I'm signing using PSS (Probabilistic Signature
Scheme, similar to OAEP enveloping), I need to generate random values.
And speaking of OAEP, I will need to generate random values when
encrypting.

It seems to me it would be a good idea to allow callers to pass in a
SecureRandom object at some point in the Signature and Cipher classes
(possibly init).

Incidentally, in the SUN implementation of DSA that I got when I
downloaded JDK 1.1 (and 1.1.1), how do you generate the random k? It
appeared to be the same k every single time.

--Steve Burnett
burnetts@rsa.com