linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] random: add blocking facility to urandom

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Message-ID: <4E6E0F90.4090905@redhat.com>
Date:	Mon, 12 Sep 2011 09:56:32 -0400
From:	Jarod Wilson <jarod@...hat.com>
To:	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
CC:	Steve Grubb <sgrubb@...hat.com>,
	Sandy Harris <sandyinchina@...il.com>,
	Neil Horman <nhorman@...hat.com>,
	Tomas Mraz <tmraz@...hat.com>,
	Sasha Levin <levinsasha928@...il.com>,
	"Ted Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>, linux-crypto@...r.kernel.org,
	Matt Mackall <mpm@...enic.com>,
	Herbert Xu <herbert.xu@...hat.com>,
	Stephan Mueller <stephan.mueller@...ec.com>,
	lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] random: add blocking facility to urandom

Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Sep 2011, Steve Grubb wrote:
>> But what I was trying to say is that we can't depend on these supplemental hardware
>> devices like TPM because we don't have access to the proprietary technical details
>> that would be necessary to supplement the analysis. And when it comes to TPM chips, I
>> bet each chip has different details and entropy sources and entropy estimations and
>> rates. Those details we can't get at, so we can't solve the problem by including that
>> hardware. That is the point I was trying to make. :)
>
> Well, there is enough prove out there that the hardware you're using
> is a perfect random number generator by itself.
>
> So stop complaining about not having access to TPM chips if you can
> create an entropy source just by (ab)using the inherent randomness of
> modern CPU architectures to refill your entropy pool on the fly when
> the need arises w/o imposing completely unintuitive thresholds and
> user visible API changes.

We started out going down that path:

http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-crypto@vger.kernel.org/msg05778.html

We hit a bit of a roadblock with it though.

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod@...hat.com


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