From owner-freebsd-current Sun Jul 16 23:14:53 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from grimreaper.grondar.za (grimreaper.grondar.za [196.7.18.138]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7D1C637B788; Sun, 16 Jul 2000 23:14:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mark@grondar.za) Received: from grimreaper.grondar.za (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by grimreaper.grondar.za (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA05906; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 08:15:53 +0200 (SAST) (envelope-from mark@grimreaper.grondar.za) Message-Id: <200007170615.IAA05906@grimreaper.grondar.za> To: Kris Kennaway Cc: current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: randomdev entropy gathering is really weak References: In-Reply-To: ; from Kris Kennaway "Sun, 16 Jul 2000 15:00:44 MST." Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 08:15:53 +0200 From: Mark Murray Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > ssh-keygen should just block until it gets enough - this is not acceptable > behaviour if /dev/urandom is returning unseeded data. OpenSSL uses > /dev/urandom at the moment - I just read a comment in md_rand.c that using > /dev/random may block, which I didn't think was true. > > On the other hand, doing a dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/null gives me > infinite "randomness" at 10MB/sec - have the semantics of /dev/random > changed? Yes; remember that what we have here is Yarrow algorithm; which is an algorithm for cryptographically secure PRNG - one whose internal state is unguessable, or if compromised folr some reason is self-recovering. "Infinite" randomness is possible with this algorithm. M -- Mark Murray Join the anti-SPAM movement: http://www.cauce.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message