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Date:      Mon, 17 Jul 2000 18:01:25 +0300
From:      Maxim Sobolev <sobomax@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>
Cc:        "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@TransSys.COM>, current@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: randomdev entropy gathering is really weak
Message-ID:  <39731FC5.34D3074D@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <200007171319.JAA04774@whizzo.transsys.com> <200007171454.QAA00856@grimreaper.grondar.za>

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Mark Murray wrote:

> > > I agree that it is not (very) random; however cclock jitter and keystroke
> > > timing can help thwart the bad guys...
> >
> > But do please keep in mind that many of my FreeBSD platforms have neither
> > keyboard or mouse.  And for the ones that do, they tend not to get used
> > until long after the system boots.  It's essential that the randomness
> > harvesting also be driven off of other events, such as network interface
> > or storage system interrupts for these environments.
>
> Agreed. I have already committed a "persistent" entropy cache that
> reseeds the random device on reboot.
>

You may also want to extend /etc/crontab to periodically save entropy. This would
help if something unexpected like halt(8) or panic(9) happened.

-Maxim






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