From owner-freebsd-audit Sun Nov 28 11:24:27 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-audit@freebsd.org Received: from november.jaded.net (november.jaded.net [216.94.113.4]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 77BFC1566D; Sun, 28 Nov 1999 11:24:11 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dan@november.jaded.net) Received: (from dan@localhost) by november.jaded.net (8.9.3/8.9.3+trinsec_nospam) id OAA33619; Sun, 28 Nov 1999 14:24:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 14:24:07 -0500 From: Dan Moschuk To: Warner Losh Cc: Dan Moschuk , Kris Kennaway , freebsd-audit@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Last random PID patch before commit Message-ID: <19991128142407.B33514@november.jaded.net> References: <19991128130432.C33028@november.jaded.net> <19991128012420.A48334@spirit.jaded.net> <19991128130432.C33028@november.jaded.net> <199911281911.MAA85867@harmony.village.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.4i In-Reply-To: <199911281911.MAA85867@harmony.village.org>; from Warner Losh on Sun, Nov 28, 1999 at 12:11:52PM -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-audit@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG | Hmmm. I think this is a bad idea. The key won't be sufficently | random since you can count on a number of bits in the stack garbage | being set due to kernel addresses. This weakens the resulting | randomness from 2048 bits down to 1500ish bits (assumnig that my read | of the code gives key a 8 bit size). What's wrong with the | /dev/random random number stream? This is exactly the sort of thing | that it is designed for.... | | Warner The only problem with the /dev/random stream is that it will not have sufficient entropy built up by the time the arc4_init() is likely to be called, at bootup. Not to say that the way I initialize it is any better, but it will work until "The best" solution can be found. I like the idea of replacing our random devices with sys/dev/rnd.c from OpenBSD. -- Dan Moschuk (TFreak!dan@freebsd.org) "Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try." -- Yoda To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-audit" in the body of the message