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Date:      Fri, 6 Sep 2013 09:46:57 -0600
From:      Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
To:        Mark R V Murray <mark@grondar.org>
Cc:        FreeBSD Security Team <secteam@freebsd.org>, FreeBSD-arch Arch <freebsd-arch@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: random(4) plugin infrastructure for mulitple RNG in a modular fashion
Message-ID:  <FE4A207E-9F5E-4782-8561-CF5BD08C3A8B@bsdimp.com>
In-Reply-To: <0ABD5A7F-D647-4958-92DB-79D277C9AE7C@grondar.org>
References:  <20130816002625.GE76666@x96.org> <9B274F48-0C88-4117-BEAC-1A555772A3C5@grondar.org> <86a9kf733d.fsf@nine.des.no> <0C97B866-A169-4141-8368-AA7F5B5382F4@grondar.org> <861u5r71zi.fsf@nine.des.no> <892B11BD-396D-4F82-B97C-753F72CA494D@grondar.org> <86r4dr5j3p.fsf@nine.des.no> <4C1BD77C-8C6B-4044-9285-5978A3BC4B70@kientzle.com> <537622E1-F785-4BFA-B829-09DCDB484606@grondar.org> <932AB5CA-778E-438D-8FD3-8C0F29F3D117@kientzle.com> <20130823231808.GT94127@funkthat.com> <0ABD5A7F-D647-4958-92DB-79D277C9AE7C@grondar.org>

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On Aug 24, 2013, at 2:35 AM, Mark R V Murray wrote:

>=20
> On 24 Aug 2013, at 00:18, John-Mark Gurney <jmg@funkthat.com> wrote:
>=20
>> Tim Kientzle wrote this message on Sun, Aug 18, 2013 at 12:27 -0700:
>>> But clearly some people really want to be able to
>>> force /dev/random to be the unconditioned output
>>> of a particular HW RNG.  I don't know if this is a
>>> good idea or not, but clearly there are people who
>>> want this.
>>=20
>> Considering that the Ivy bridge's rdrand implementation already uses
>> AES to condition the raw entropy source, using Yarrow/etc to
>> additionally condition it seems excesive, hence why some people want
>> to use it directly=85
>=20
> Nehemiah as well, using a Davies-meyer hash in software. However, what
> may be excessive for one person may be another's requirement.

Especially in light of the recent NSA revelations...  I for one won't =
trust hardware random number generation...

I find it interesting that earlier in the thread there was a desire by a =
certain router company to fulfill the NSA's requirement that it use the =
random number stream from the intel chips directly, and that's what =
kicked off this overly long thread.

Warner




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