Number Generator

The flaw in Windows 2000's random number generator uncovered by Israeli researchers is a vulnerability -- but not a security vulnerability, Microsoft Corp. said late last week, as it left users wondering if newer versions of the operating system shared the same problem.

In a paper published earlier this month, Benny Pinkas of the University of Haifa and two Hebrew University graduate students, Zvi Gutterman and Leo Dorrendorf, described how attackers could exploit a weakness in Windows' pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) to predict encryption keys generated by the operating system and its applications.