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Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 15:37:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: Nate Lawson <nate@root.org>
To: David Malone <dwmalone@maths.tcd.ie>
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cc: cvs-src@FreeBSD.ORG
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cc: Mark Murray <mark@grondar.org>
Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/modules/random Makefile src/sys/dev/random
 randomdev.h randomdev_soft.c randomdev_soft.h yar
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On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, David Malone wrote:
> 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.

Please don't sidetrack the discussion.  That is a separate topic.

-Nate