Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 25 Apr 2000 08:21:46 -0700
From:      Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group <Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca>
To:        James Wyatt <jwyatt@rwsystems.net>
Cc:        Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group <Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca>, Alex Michlin <alex@delete.org>, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: egd vs /dev/random on FBSD 
Message-ID:  <200004251522.IAA03533@cwsys.cwsent.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 24 Apr 2000 13:44:41 CDT." <Pine.BSF.4.10.10004241331340.748-100000@bsdie.rwsystems.net> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In message <Pine.BSF.4.10.10004241331340.748-100000@bsdie.rwsystems.net>
, James
 Wyatt writes:
> On Mon, 24 Apr 2000, Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group wrote:
> > In message <Pine.BSF.4.10.10004211424240.5248-100000@cx638115-d.sthngtn1.ct
> .hom
> > e.com>, Alex Michlin writes:
> > > How can a hacker enable promiscious mode though an ftp connection?
> > > I did a `last` to see who, if anyone, logged on and the only logon I saw
> > > was an ftp connection from an @home machine.  I don't see any extra
> > > programs running on the machine.  Do I need to be concerned about telnet
> > > passwords, etc?
> > > 
> > > Apr 20 13:10:12 hostname /kernel: xl0: promiscuous mode enabled
> > 
> > Are you sure it's a hacker?  Do these "events" coincide with other 
> > events, e.g. system boot, an application starting, etc.?  For example, 
> > we use an application called egd (entropy gathering daemon) on our 
> > servers on our raised floors, which puts the interfaces into 
> > promiscuous mode, among other entropy gathering things done, just after 
> > boot to initially set up its entropy pool.  Therefore I can directly 
> > correlate promiscuous mode with system boot.
> 
> I thought that /dev/random was good enough on FreeBSD, given a reasonably
> busy IRQ (no problem around here!). I have to run egd on an AIX box to get
> a reasonable amount of entropy - and still can't get GPG to compile quite
> right on it... - Jy@

We use egd on our Suns and Alphas.  On our FreeBSD systems we use 
/dev/random.

There was a whole discussion about this on -security or -stable about a 
year ago regarding which interrupts were best to use which might have a 
better chance of causing the system to crash.  Keyboards were O.K., 
disk controllers and NIC cards were generally not O.K.  Can FreeBSD-4 
handle more interrupt latency than [23].x did (cannot recall whether 
the thread was talking about FreeBSD-2 or 3)?


Regards,                       Phone:  (250)387-8437
Cy Schubert                      Fax:  (250)387-5766
Team Leader, Sun/DEC Team   Internet:  Cy.Schubert@osg.gov.bc.ca
Open Systems Group, ITSD, ISTA
Province of BC





To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200004251522.IAA03533>