linux-kernel - Re: entropy gathering (was Re: Why does reading from /dev/urandom deplete entropy so much?)

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <20071208204239.GG15227@1wt.eu>
Date:	Sat, 8 Dec 2007 21:42:39 +0100
From:	Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>
To:	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>
Cc:	Matt Mackall <mpm@...enic.com>, Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu>,
	Mike McGrath <mmcgrath@...hat.com>,
	Jon Masters <jonathan@...masters.org>,
	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	Ray Lee <ray@...rabbit.org>, Adrian Bunk <bunk@...nel.org>,
	Marc Haber <mh+linux-kernel@...schlus.de>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, hmh@...ian.org
Subject: Re: entropy gathering (was Re: Why does reading from /dev/urandom deplete entropy so much?)

On Sat, Dec 08, 2007 at 02:36:33PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 
> As an aside...
> 
> Speaking as the maintainer rng-tools, which is the home of the hardware 
> RNG entropy gathering daemon...
> 
> I wish somebody (not me) would take rngd and several other projects, and 
> combine them into a single actively maintained "entropy gathering" package.
> 
> IMO entropy gathering has been a long-standing need for headless network 
> servers (and now virtual machines).
> 
> In addition to rngd for hardware RNGs, I've been daemons out there that 
> gather from audio and video sources (generally open wires/channels with 
> nothing plugged in), thermal sources, etc.  There is a lot of entropy 
> that could be gathered via userland, if you think creatively.

I remember having installed openssh on an AIX machines years ago, and
being amazed by the number of sources it collected entropy from. Simple
commands such as "ifconfig -a", "netstat -i" and "du -a", "ps -ef", "w"
provided a lot of entropy.

Regards,
Willy

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/