Editing Random number generator attack (section)

===Predictable Netscape seed===
Early versions of [[Netscape Communications Corporation|Netscape]]'s [[Secure Sockets Layer]] (SSL) encryption protocol used pseudo-random quantities derived from a PRNG seeded with three variable values: the time of day, the process ID, and the parent process ID. These quantities are often relatively predictable, and so have little [[information entropy|entropy]] and are less than random, and so that version of SSL was found to be insecure as a result. The problem was reported to Netscape in 1994 by [[Phillip Hallam-Baker]], then a researcher in the CERN Web team, but was not fixed prior to release. The problem in the running code was discovered in 1995 by [[Ian Goldberg]] and [[David A. Wagner|David Wagner]],<ref>
{{cite web
| url=http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/ddj-netscape.html
| title=Randomness and Netscape Browser
| work=Dr. Dobb's Journal
| date=January 1996
|author1=Goldberg, Ian |author2=Wagner, David }}
</ref> who had to [[Reverse engineering|reverse engineer]] the [[object code]] because Netscape refused to reveal the details of its random number generation ([[security through obscurity]]). That RNG was fixed in later releases (version 2 and higher) by more robust (i.e., more random and so higher entropy from an attacker's perspective) seeding.