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Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 12:36:35 +0100
From: David Malone <dwmalone@maths.tcd.ie>
To: Mark Murray <mark@grondar.org>
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Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/modules/random Makefile src/sys/dev/random
	harvest.c hash.c hash.h nehemiah.c nehemiah.h probe.c randomdev.c
	randomdev.h randomdev_soft.c randomdev_soft.h yar
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On Sun, Apr 11, 2004 at 08:46:43AM +0100, Mark Murray wrote:
> Yarrow is unsuitable for this purpose; it is a great generator when
> you have a low-entropy environment and you need to protect against
> attackers having potential knowledge of the inputs.

I still think it would be nice if our random infrastructure had a
block-until-accumulated-'enough'-randomness mode, like the old
/dev/random had, to avoid some future attack based on Yarrow's fixed
size state. I don't think it will be a realistic attack any time
soon, but it might be nice for baco-hat types. In the case where
high-quality, fast hardware based generators are available, this
seems to be a more realistic option though.

I'm happy enough to live without this, since we thrashed this out
before, but if you're looking at options, you might keep it at the
back of your mind.

	David.