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Date:      Fri, 24 Jul 2015 07:59:35 +0100
From:      Mark R V Murray <markm@FreeBSD.org>
To:        John-Mark Gurney <jmg@funkthat.com>
Cc:        src-committers <src-committers@freebsd.org>, svn-src-all@freebsd.org, svn-src-head@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: svn commit: r284959 - in head: . share/man/man4 share/man/man9 sys/conf sys/dev/glxsb sys/dev/hifn sys/dev/random sys/dev/rndtest sys/dev/safe sys/dev/syscons sys/dev/ubsec sys/dev/virtio/random sy...
Message-ID:  <BC734D25-375C-4C1C-BA8A-BD91158B6A39@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <20150724012519.GE78154@funkthat.com>
References:  <201506301700.t5UH0jPq001498@svn.freebsd.org> <alpine.BSF.2.20.1507221138360.1071@desktop> <FFAED695-145A-45F5-988D-B843EF5F544B@FreeBSD.org> <alpine.BSF.2.20.1507221249120.1071@desktop> <FFFB06D7-164B-40B3-AFC3-A6630BCF074E@bsdimp.com> <E20B169F-4C8A-4D11-9853-5C2EFC116450@FreeBSD.org> <F54A96A8-D9AD-409A-814F-538B6AD3CD50@yahoo.com> <20150724012519.GE78154@funkthat.com>

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> On 24 Jul 2015, at 02:25, John-Mark Gurney <jmg@funkthat.com> wrote:
>=20
> I would like to point out that the goal of collecting large amounts
> is starting to fall out of favor, and I happen to agree with the likes
> of djb[1] that we don't need an infinite amount of entropy collected =
by
> the system.  If the attacker can read out our RNG state, then we are
> already screwed due to many other vulns.

I=E2=80=99m working on a premise of =E2=80=9Ctools, not policy=E2=80=9D. =
I=E2=80=99d like there to be
enough harvesting points for the box owner to get the warm fuzzies.
If they choose to use less, fine by me.

> Many of the issues that FreeBSD sees with lack of entropy at start up
> is more of a problem on how systems are installed and provisioned.  I
> don't believe that we currently store any entropy from the install
> process, yet this is one of the best places to get it, the user is
> banging on keyboard selecting options, etc.  If an image is designed
> to be cloned (vm images or appliance images) we need to have a
> mechanism to ensure that before we start, we get the entropy from
> other sources, be it a hardware RNG or the console.

Getting an initial entropy bundle for first boot is high up on my
TODO list. :-) Patches welcome! We need the usual /entropy (or
/var/db/entropy/=E2=80=A6 or whatever) and crucially we need =
/boot/entropy
and the correct invocation in /boot/loader.conf.

> I would like to see us scale back the entropy collection, and replace
> it with something like scan the zone once an hour or something
> similar.  Or do something dtrace style, where we nop/jmp the
> collection after we feel that the system has collected enough.

Most of the current entropy gathering is just about invisible
anyway. I think the above goes too far, but may be a useful way
of enabling/disabling (say) UMA gathering on the fly.

> Heck, piping in mic data to /dev/random is a good way to seed the
> rng on many machines.

Well, sure, but what if you don=E2=80=99t have microphone? I want lots
of choices, in anticipation of only a subset being usable.

M
--=20
Mark R V Murray




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