Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 12:48:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Fundakowski Feldman <green@FreeBSD.org> To: Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za> Cc: current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: randomdev entropy gathering is really weak Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007301237390.36725-100000@green.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <200007300918.LAA07595@grimreaper.grondar.za>
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On Sun, 30 Jul 2000, Mark Murray wrote: > This is a reversion to the count-entropy-and-block model which I have > been fiercely resisting (and which argument I thought I had sucessfully > defended). > > My solution is to get the entropy gathering at a high enough rate that > this is not necessary. How does entropy gathering at a high enough rate solve this particularly? Unless you wait for reseeds while reading, it simply doesn't matter how much entropy is being gathered at the time since reading any amount just doesn't give you a new key. Indeed, if you can get enough entropy that the blocking in read would be very short, you would still need to block in read to give it time to use the entropy. The only alternative I can see that you might be thinking of would be that the user would be encouraged to only read a small amount at a time and reading more soon later in the assumption that Yarrow will be rekeyed. Then this would be just forcing the user to do the blocking manually, and non-deterministically. So how exactly _would_ just having a high entropy gathering rate help the case that you need a large amount of data from /dev/random with true entropic value, not only 256 bits worth? It's not like reseeds would be occurring while reads were in progress; reads are too fast for that and are splsofttq() protected, anyway. > I also agreed to _maybe_ look at a re-engineer of the "old" code in a > secure way if a decent algorithm could be found (I am reading some > papers about this ATM). > > M > -- > Mark Murray > Join the anti-SPAM movement: http://www.cauce.org -- Brian Fundakowski Feldman \ FreeBSD: The Power to Serve! / green@FreeBSD.org `------------------------------' To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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