From owner-freebsd-current Sun Jul 16 10:59:48 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix, from userid 542) id 7806137B533; Sun, 16 Jul 2000 10:59:45 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2000 10:59:45 -0700 From: "Andrey A. Chernov" To: markm@freebsd.org Cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: randomdev entropy gathering is really weak Message-ID: <20000716105943.A60072@freebsd.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.4i Organization: Biomechanoid Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I found that I always got the same fortune quote after reboot, over and over again. It means that /dev/random produce exact the same values after reboot. It means that machine timer or keyboard not used for enthropy gathering. Using keyboard alone not helps for automatic tasks because it can be even not present, so machine timer must be used at least after reboot stage i.e. in randomdev init procedure. Otherwise first random values are very predictable and subject for attack. -- Andrey A. Chernov http://ache.pp.ru/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message