Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 17 Aug 2002 22:05:49 -0700 | From | Dmitri <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] (0/4) Entropy accounting fixes |
| |
Quoting Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>:
> Be realistic. This is what I ask of you. We want _real_world_ security, > not a completely made-up-example-for-the-NSA-that-is-useless-to-anybody- > else. > > All your arguments seem to boil down to "people shouldn't use /dev/random > at all, they should use /dev/urandom".
Wouldn't it be much easier to ask -very few- people (GnuPG/SSL/SSH teams primarily) to use /dev/super-reliable-mathematically-proven-random if available, instead of asking much larger crowd to hack their code? This will be backward compatible, and at the same time offers a much better randomness for those who care about it. Myself, I read 128-bit session keys for multiple, not-so-secure, short connections from /dev/random and it would be sad if it runs out of data.
Also, /dev/random may take data from /dev/super-...random until it sucks it dry, and then switches to less secure sources. This will guarantee that the enthropy of readings is -not worse than-, and for moderate requests is much better.
Dmitri
-- 16. The Evil Overlord will not risk his life to save yours. Why risk yours for his? ("Evil Overlord" by Peter Anspach and John VanSickl) [unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature] | |