For the lazy, this is a link to a comment by Theodore Ts'o, kernel dev, who says:
> I am so glad I resisted pressure from engineers working at Intel to let /dev/random in Linux rely blindly on the output of the RDRAND instructure. Relying solely on an implementation sealed inside a chip and which is impossible to audit is a BAD idea. Quoting from the article...
Theodore Ts'o is maintainer of the ext filesystems (particularly ext4), as well as, IIRC, /dev/random and other CSRNG related components of the kernel.
Theodore Ts'o is responsible for perpetuating the myth that entropy/randomness can run out, leading systemd (and other software) to do crazy things, such as trying to use RDRAND, to avoid "drain[ing] randomness from the kernel pool". The bugs and security vulnerabilities resulting from this myth probably neutralize the benefit that came from from his resistance to RDRAND in the kernel.
Can you expand on this, or link to some sources that expand on this idea that the assumption above is wrong? As a person who has not dealt with crypto really at all I had heard this explained several times before and assumed it was generally accepted.
For the lazy, this is a link to a comment by Theodore Ts'o, kernel dev, who says:
> I am so glad I resisted pressure from engineers working at Intel to let /dev/random in Linux rely blindly on the output of the RDRAND instructure. Relying solely on an implementation sealed inside a chip and which is impossible to audit is a BAD idea. Quoting from the article...
Theodore Ts'o is maintainer of the ext filesystems (particularly ext4), as well as, IIRC, /dev/random and other CSRNG related components of the kernel.
Thank you, Theodore Ts'o.
Theodore Ts'o is responsible for perpetuating the myth that entropy/randomness can run out, leading systemd (and other software) to do crazy things, such as trying to use RDRAND, to avoid "drain[ing] randomness from the kernel pool". The bugs and security vulnerabilities resulting from this myth probably neutralize the benefit that came from from his resistance to RDRAND in the kernel.
> the myth that entropy/randomness can run out
Can you expand on this, or link to some sources that expand on this idea that the assumption above is wrong? As a person who has not dealt with crypto really at all I had heard this explained several times before and assumed it was generally accepted.
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