From owner-freebsd-security Thu Mar 27 16:27:26 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA06183 for security-outgoing; Thu, 27 Mar 1997 16:27:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from sovcom.kiae.su (sovcom.kiae.su [193.125.152.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id QAA06173; Thu, 27 Mar 1997 16:27:13 -0800 (PST) Received: by sovcom.kiae.su id AA05917 (5.65.kiae-1 ); Fri, 28 Mar 1997 03:17:59 +0300 Received: by sovcom.KIAE.su (UUMAIL/2.0); Fri, 28 Mar 97 03:17:59 +0300 Received: (from ache@localhost) by nagual.ru (8.8.5/8.8.5) id DAA00574; Fri, 28 Mar 1997 03:06:15 +0300 (MSK) Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 03:06:13 +0300 (MSK) From: =?KOI8-R?B?4c7E0sXKIP7F0s7P1w==?= To: Poul-Henning Kamp Cc: Joerg Wunsch , markm@FreeBSD.ORG, security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ATTENTION: Initial state of random pool In-Reply-To: <550.859495025@critter> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-security@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 27 Mar 1997, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > A semi-not-too-bad priming method could be: > > for dev in all diskmedia > ts = time > bno = ts.tv_usec & dssize(dev) > read sector bno > add sectore to random pool We don't need more methods, all we need is _one_ true random method which generates at least _one_ random word initially, because pool hashed after it, i.e. it seeds MD5 RNG. Good guess will be timer method which already present. Looking in the code (not deeply), I can't say, is any true randomness added initially, I think somebody who knows it better (Mark?) can answer. -- Andrey A. Chernov http://www.nagual.ru/~ache/