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author | Hannes Frederic Sowa <hannes@stressinduktion.org> | 2014-07-28 14:01:38 +0200 |
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committer | David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net> | 2014-07-30 13:55:27 -0700 |
commit | 4ada97abe937cdb3fc029a871d5b0f21aa661a60 (patch) | |
tree | 74cd1b18f41a06e2c86e96565cd887206a28c87e /lib/hash.c | |
parent | f139c74a8df071217dcd63f3ef06ae7be7071c4d (diff) | |
download | linux-4ada97abe937cdb3fc029a871d5b0f21aa661a60.tar.bz2 |
random32: mix in entropy from core to late initcall
Currently, we have a 3-stage seeding process in prandom():
Phase 1 is from the early actual initialization of prandom()
subsystem which happens during core_initcall() and remains
most likely until the beginning of late_initcall() phase.
Here, the system might not have enough entropy available
for seeding with strong randomness from the random driver.
That means, we currently have a 32bit weak LCG() seeding
the PRNG status register 1 and mixing that successively
into the other 3 registers just to get it up and running.
Phase 2 starts with late_initcall() phase resp. when the
random driver has initialized its non-blocking pool with
enough entropy. At that time, we throw away *all* inner
state from its 4 registers and do a full reseed with strong
randomness.
Phase 3 starts right after that and does a periodic reseed
with random slack of status register 1 by a strong random
source again.
A problem in phase 1 is that during bootup data structures
can be initialized, e.g. on module load time, and thus access
a weakly seeded prandom and are never changed for the rest
of their live-time, thus carrying along the results from a
week seed. Lets make sure that current but also future users
access a possibly better early seeded prandom.
This patch therefore improves phase 1 by trying to make it
more 'unpredictable' through mixing in seed from a possible
hardware source. Now, the mix-in xors inner state with the
outcome of either of the two functions arch_get_random_{,seed}_int(),
preferably arch_get_random_seed_int() as it likely represents
a non-deterministic random bit generator in hw rather than
a cryptographically secure PRNG in hw. However, not all might
have the first one, so we use the PRNG as a fallback if
available. As we xor the seed into the current state, the
worst case would be that a hardware source could be unverifiable
compromised or backdoored. In that case nevertheless it
would be as good as our original early seeding function
prandom_seed_very_weak() since we mix through xor which is
entropy preserving.
Joint work with Daniel Borkmann.
Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann <dborkman@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Hannes Frederic Sowa <hannes@stressinduktion.org>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Diffstat (limited to 'lib/hash.c')
0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions