From: Peter Samuelson <peter@cadcamlab.org>
To: Kurt Garloff <garloff@suse.de>,
"Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@MIT.EDU>,
Linux kernel list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: /dev/random: really secure?
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 06:48:00 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20001219064800.B980@cadcamlab.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20001218213801.A19903@pcep-jamie.cern.ch> <200012182133.QAA02136@tsx-prime.MIT.EDU> <20001219124948.P17777@garloff.suse.de>
In-Reply-To: <20001219124948.P17777@garloff.suse.de>; from garloff@suse.de on Tue, Dec 19, 2000 at 12:49:48PM +0100
[Kurt Garloff]
> It should not be world-writeable, IMHO. So the only one who can feed
> entropy there is root, who should know aht (s)he's doing ...
No, it is *good* to allow users to add entropy to the RNG pool, but it
is *bad* to assume that it is in fact entropy.
The beauty of cryptographic hashes is that the user can't *decrease*
the total entropy, even with 'cat /dev/zero > /dev/random'. All he can
do by adding to the pool is *increase* your confidence that you do in
fact have at least the estimated amount of randomness. The more
"untrusted" entropy you feed into the pool, the less it will matter (in
practical terms) if in the future a "trusted" source is compromised.
Peter
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2000-12-19 13:18 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2000-12-17 21:50 Karel Kulhavy
2000-12-18 0:18 ` David Schwartz
2000-12-18 8:21 ` Karel Kulhavy
2000-12-18 20:38 ` Jamie Lokier
2000-12-18 21:33 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2000-12-18 22:15 ` Andreas Dilger
2000-12-19 9:27 ` Daniel Stone
2000-12-19 11:49 ` Kurt Garloff
2000-12-19 12:48 ` Peter Samuelson [this message]
2000-12-19 16:51 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2000-12-19 17:39 ` Pavel Machek
2000-12-18 21:58 ` David Schwartz
2000-12-18 8:49 ` David Feuer
2000-12-18 9:22 ` Martin Mares
2000-12-19 6:49 ` Philipp Rumpf
2000-12-20 3:41 Bernd Eckenfels
2000-12-20 17:58 ` Jamie Lokier
2000-12-20 3:49 Bernd Eckenfels
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