From owner-freebsd-current  Thu Oct 26  2:15:31 2000
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Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 02:17:37 -0700
From: Kris Kennaway <kris@citusc.usc.edu>
To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
Cc: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>, Andrej Cernov <ache@nagual.pp.ru>,
	current@FreeBSD.ORG, markm@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: entropy reseeding is totally broken
Message-ID: <20001026021737.B69282@citusc17.usc.edu>
References: <200010241816.MAA17356@harmony.village.org> <200010251035.DAA19676@usr02.primenet.com>
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In-Reply-To: <200010251035.DAA19676@usr02.primenet.com>; from tlambert@primenet.com on Wed, Oct 25, 2000 at 10:35:55AM +0000
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On Wed, Oct 25, 2000 at 10:35:55AM +0000, Terry Lambert wrote:
> > I see the opposite.  I see that without writing to the /dev/random
> > device I get a cons is an object that cares fortune 99+% of the time
> > on my first login.  With it, I see more decently random fortunes (but
> > I haven't done a statistical analysis of them to see how random things 
> > are).
> 
> Is it just me, or have there been more problems achieving
> real statistical randomness since /dev/random went in, than
> at any other time in BSD history?
> 
> I booted a 1.5 system a couple of times for grins.
> 
> It gives you a different fortune each time.

The issue is one of seeding the device strongly. If all you care about
is getting a different fortune when you boot then seeding with
e.g. the system boot time would be enough, but obviously it doesnt
make /dev/random cryptographically secure.

Kris


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