Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 7 Jul 2012 21:41:24 -0400 | From | Theodore Ts'o <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 07/12] random: use the arch-specific rng in xfer_secondary_pool |
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On Sun, Jul 08, 2012 at 02:06:46AM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote: > > Surely the number of random bytes being added is i * sizeof(long), not > sizeof(u.hwrand)? >
Meh; Kees Cook has made the same observation. Basically, in the unlikely case where RDRAND fails, we'll end up mixing in stack garbage. It's not a security vulnerability, since the contents of the entropy pool never gets exposed. In fact, one could argue that mixing in some unknown garbage from the kernel stack might actually help a little; but it can't hurt.
- Ted
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