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Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:59:28 +0000
From: "Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@redhat.com>
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Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 02/17] crypto: add cryptographic random
	byte source
Reply-To: "Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@redhat.com>
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To: Fam Zheng <famz@redhat.com>
Cc: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>, qemu-devel@nongnu.org, qemu-block@nongnu.org

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 02:12:06PM +0800, Fam Zheng wrote:
> On Wed, 01/20 17:38, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> > +int qcrypto_random_bytes(uint8_t *buf G_GNUC_UNUSED,
> > +                         size_t buflen G_GNUC_UNUSED,
> > +                         Error **errp)
> > +{
> > +    error_setg(errp, "No random byte source provided in this build");
> > +    return -1;
> 
> Curious, why does a random(3) or /dev/random implementation fall short to
> error?

random(3) does not provide crytographically strong random numbers.

/dev/random would be suitable, but if we read that directly we would
deplete entropy very quickly.

The gnutls backends will use /dev/random in combination with a
cryptographically secure generator to provide high entropy
numbers, at a high data rate.

Regards,
Daniel
-- 
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