From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Dec 28 12: 0:54 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8EA1937B401 for ; Sat, 28 Dec 2002 12:00:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from clover.kientzle.com (user-112uh9a.biz.mindspring.com [66.47.69.42]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E9D9243E4A for ; Sat, 28 Dec 2002 12:00:52 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kientzle@acm.org) Received: from acm.org (c43 [66.47.69.43]) by clover.kientzle.com (8.11.3/8.11.3) with ESMTP id gBSK0qE19006 for ; Sat, 28 Dec 2002 12:00:52 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kientzle@acm.org) Message-ID: <3E0E02F3.6030205@acm.org> Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 12:00:51 -0800 From: Tim Kientzle Reply-To: kientzle@acm.org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:0.9.6) Gecko/20011206 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Can dhclient rely on /dev/random? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I just noticed that dhclient's randomness package uses, among other things, a variety of system commands (ps, netstat, etc) to harvest entropy. Unfortunately, dhclient is used in many situations where these commands are not available: sysinstall floppy, diskless client, /rescue, etc. The obvious fix would alter dhclient to rely only on /dev/random for entropy. (It seems this code is common to bind as well.) Policy Question: is a fast, high-quality /dev/random a gauranteed feature starting with 5.0? Technical Question: is /dev/random sufficient for the cryptographic requirements of programs like dhclient, bind, etc? I believe both of these are answered 'yes'. If so, I'll work up a patch to alter these programs to rely solely on /dev/random. I suppose that patch should be sent to the ISC folks, since those programs are vendor imports. (?) (I'm envisioning a FAST_GOOD_DEV_RANDOM compile-time switch; if set, /dev/random would be the only source of entropy used.) Any pointers/suggestions appreciated, Tim Kientzle To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message