Re: Bug in random32.c: all-zero outputs with probability 1/2^32,other seeding bugs

From: Stephen Hemminger
Date: Wed Jul 02 2008 - 12:40:33 EST


On Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:22:31 -0500
Matt Mackall <mpm@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 17:34 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Wed, 2 Jul 2008 01:19:27 +0200
> > Benoit Boissinot <bboissin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > [who maintains random32.c ?]
> >
> > ah. I think it's ancient net code which was recently hoisted into lib/.
> > So: not really anybody.
> >
> > I've been hopefully cc'ing Matt and Ted in the hope of fooling them
> > into looking at it. But a netdev cc is appropriate also.
>
> I did look at it, and it looks reasonable. So:
>
> Acked-by: Matt Mackall <mpm@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Stephen Hemminger is responsible for the original code, I believe. I've
> been tempted to slurp this functionality into random.c but keep getting
> side-tracked into theoretical investigations of better functions, as I'm
> not a big fan of the current one from either a performance or strength
> perspective.
>

Yes, I took it from gnu scientific lib it for use in netem. The seeding
fixes make sense.

Note: this should not be a security issue since this routine is explicitly
not intended for cryptographic use.
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