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Date:      Sat, 28 Dec 2002 13:32:41 -0800
From:      Tim Kientzle <kientzle@acm.org>
To:        Mike Silbersack <silby@silby.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Can dhclient rely on /dev/random?
Message-ID:  <3E0E1879.6090801@acm.org>
References:  <3E0E02F3.6030205@acm.org> <20021228150348.Y10588-100000@patrocles.silby.com>

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Mike Silbersack wrote:

> On Sat, 28 Dec 2002, Tim Kientzle wrote:

>>Technical Question: is /dev/random sufficient
>>for the cryptographic requirements of programs
>>like dhclient, bind, etc?
> 
> Yes.
> 

> The only problem is that /dev/urandom and /dev/random might be too slow ...


I've clocked /dev/random on -current at
just about 10MB/s (on a 1GHz AMD Duron).  That's
plenty fast enough for generating session keys. ;-)

> ... you may even want to use
> /dev/urandom under 4.x, although it's nowhere near as good as the
> /dev/(u)random on 5.x.


If this code is just used for generating occasional
keys, 4.x's /dev/random may well suffice.  As I
dig deeper, though, I'm starting to suspect that
this code isn't actually used by dhclient at all.
That would suggest a much simpler fix... ;-)

Tim


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