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From: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>
To: Kees Cook <kees.cook@canonical.com>
Cc: Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com>,
	Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com>,
	libc-alpha@sourceware.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] ELF: implement AT_RANDOM for future glibc use
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:00:21 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87ej2untze.fsf@basil.nowhere.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20081003001616.GN10632@outflux.net> (Kees Cook's message of "Thu, 2 Oct 2008 17:16:16 -0700")

Kees Cook <kees.cook@canonical.com> writes:

> While discussing[1] the need for glibc to have access to random bytes
> during program load, it seems that an earlier attempt to implement
> AT_RANDOM got stalled.  This implements a configurable number of random
> bytes available to every ELF program via a new auxv AT_RANDOM vector.

While the basic idea is good using get_random_bytes() is not. 

That eats precious cryptography strength entropy from the entropy
pool, which on many systems is not adequately fed. In those cases you
really only want to use it for real keys, not for lower grade
applications. The applications glibc wants to use this for do not
really require crypto strength entropy, just relatively unpredictable
randomness.

What you should instead do is to initialize some other cryptographic RNG 
regularly and use the output of that.

-Andi

  parent reply	other threads:[~2008-10-06  6:00 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 37+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <20081001201116.GD12527@outflux.net>
     [not found] ` <48E3EFD6.2010704@redhat.com>
     [not found]   ` <20081001215657.GH12527@outflux.net>
     [not found]     ` <20081001220948.GC32107@sunsite.ms.mff.cuni.cz>
     [not found]       ` <20081001222706.68E7E1544B4@magilla.localdomain>
2008-10-03  0:16         ` [PATCH] ELF: implement AT_RANDOM for future glibc use Kees Cook
2008-10-03  0:43           ` Jakub Jelinek
2008-10-03  5:25             ` Kees Cook
2008-10-03  5:29             ` Kees Cook
2008-10-03  5:57               ` Arjan van de Ven
2008-10-03  6:25                 ` Ulrich Drepper
2008-10-03 14:50                   ` [PATCH] ELF: implement AT_RANDOM for glibc PRNG seeding Kees Cook
2008-10-03 14:56                     ` Ulrich Drepper
2008-10-03 14:57                     ` Jakub Jelinek
2008-10-03 17:33                       ` Kees Cook
2008-10-03 17:41                         ` Ulrich Drepper
2008-10-03 17:59                           ` [PATCH v5] " Kees Cook
2008-10-18  5:42                             ` Ulrich Drepper
2008-10-21 20:01                             ` Andrew Morton
2008-10-21 20:22                               ` Ulrich Drepper
2008-10-27  5:46                                 ` Andrew Morton
2008-10-03  0:52           ` [PATCH] ELF: implement AT_RANDOM for future glibc use Roland McGrath
2008-10-03  5:15             ` Kees Cook
2008-10-03 20:22               ` Roland McGrath
2008-10-06  6:00           ` Andi Kleen [this message]
2008-10-06 17:50             ` Kees Cook
2008-10-06 18:25               ` David Wagner
2008-10-06 20:23                 ` Andi Kleen
2008-10-06 22:16                   ` David Wagner
2008-10-06 19:26               ` Andi Kleen
2008-10-06 22:01                 ` Kees Cook
2008-10-06 23:19                   ` Andi Kleen
2008-10-06 23:29                     ` Kees Cook
2008-10-06 23:44                       ` Andi Kleen
2008-10-06 22:07                 ` Kees Cook
2008-10-06 23:28                   ` Andi Kleen
2008-10-06 23:58                   ` Roland McGrath
2008-10-07  0:08                     ` Ulrich Drepper
2008-10-07  0:31                     ` Kees Cook
2008-10-07  0:57                       ` Ulrich Drepper
2008-10-07  1:44                         ` Kees Cook
2008-10-07  1:51                           ` Ulrich Drepper

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