From: "PaX Team" <pageexec@freemail.hu>
To: Emese Revfy <re.emese@gmail.com>, Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: "kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com"
<kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com>,
Brad Spengler <spender@grsecurity.net>,
Michal Marek <mmarek@suse.com>,
LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@socionext.com>,
linux-kbuild <linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org>,
"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>,
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
Linux-MM <linux-mm@kvack.org>, Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>,
Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
Paul McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
bart.vanassche@sandisk.com,
"David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v1 1/3] Add the latent_entropy gcc plugin
Date: Wed, 25 May 2016 01:40:21 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <5744E665.28844.9DDA03D@pageexec.freemail.hu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAGXu5jJHenHARDZt=51m1XbSStTxpG90Dv=Fpkn79A6pZYtGOw@mail.gmail.com>
On 24 May 2016 at 10:32, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 3:15 PM, Emese Revfy <re.emese@gmail.com> wrote:
> > This plugin mitigates the problem of the kernel having too little entropy during
> > and after boot for generating crypto keys.
> >
> I'm excited to see this! This looks like it'll help a lot with early
> entropy, which is something that'll be a problem for some
> architectures that are trying to do early randomish things (e.g. the
> heap layout randomization, various canaries, etc).
>
> Do you have any good examples of a before/after case of early
> randomness being fixed by this?
unfortunately, i don't know of a way to quantify this kind of PRNG as the effective
algorithm is not something simple and well-structured for which we have theories and
tools to analyze already. of course this cuts both ways, an attacker faces the same
barrier of non-analyzability.
what can at most be observed is the state of the latent_entropy global variable after
init across many boots but that'd provide a rather low and useless lower estimate only
(e.g., up to 20 bits for a million reboots, or 30 bits for a billion reboots, etc).
to answer your question, i'd like to believe that there's enough latent entropy in
program state that can be harnessed to (re)seed the entropy pool but we'll probably
never know just how well we are doing it so accounting for it and claiming 'fixed'
will stay in the realm of wishful thinking i'm afraid.
cheers,
PaX Team
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-05-24 23:41 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 20+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-05-23 22:14 [PATCH v1 0/3] Introduce the latent_entropy gcc plugin Emese Revfy
2016-05-23 22:15 ` [PATCH v1 1/3] Add " Emese Revfy
2016-05-24 17:32 ` Kees Cook
2016-05-24 21:23 ` Emese Revfy
2016-05-24 23:40 ` PaX Team [this message]
2016-05-25 2:55 ` Kees Cook
2016-05-30 22:39 ` Emese Revfy
2016-05-23 22:16 ` [PATCH v1 2/3] Mark functions with the latent_entropy attribute Emese Revfy
2016-05-24 17:16 ` Kees Cook
2016-05-24 20:45 ` Emese Revfy
2016-05-24 20:55 ` Kees Cook
2016-05-23 22:17 ` [PATCH v1 3/3] Add the extra_latent_entropy kernel parameter Emese Revfy
2016-05-24 17:09 ` Kees Cook
2016-05-24 20:29 ` Emese Revfy
2016-05-29 17:59 [PATCH v1 1/3] Add the latent_entropy gcc plugin Hector Martin
2016-05-30 2:16 ` Kees Cook
2016-05-30 3:46 ` Hector Martin "marcan"
2016-05-30 15:40 ` Kees Cook
2016-05-30 20:24 ` Hector Martin "marcan"
2016-05-31 17:25 ` Kees Cook
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=5744E665.28844.9DDA03D@pageexec.freemail.hu \
--to=pageexec@freemail.hu \
--cc=akpm@linux-foundation.org \
--cc=axboe@kernel.dk \
--cc=bart.vanassche@sandisk.com \
--cc=davem@davemloft.net \
--cc=keescook@chromium.org \
--cc=kernel-hardening@lists.openwall.com \
--cc=linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=linux-mm@kvack.org \
--cc=mingo@redhat.com \
--cc=mmarek@suse.com \
--cc=paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com \
--cc=re.emese@gmail.com \
--cc=spender@grsecurity.net \
--cc=tglx@linutronix.de \
--cc=tytso@mit.edu \
--cc=viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk \
--cc=yamada.masahiro@socionext.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).