Re: [PATCH v5] ELF: implement AT_RANDOM for glibc PRNG seeding

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Tue Oct 21 2008 - 16:03:17 EST


On Fri, 3 Oct 2008 10:59:17 -0700
Kees Cook <kees.cook@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> While discussing[1] the need for glibc to have access to random bytes
> during program load, it seems that an earlier attempt to implement
> AT_RANDOM got stalled. This implements a random 16 byte string, available
> to every ELF program via a new auxv AT_RANDOM vector.
>
> [1] http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2008-10/msg00006.html

I read the above changeloglet and read the above-linked page and it's
still 87% unclear to me what this feature does. Something to do with
stack randomisation, apparently. I suppose I could go do further
hunting, but from the quality-of-changelog POV I don't think I should
need to do so.

IOW: better changelog, please.

It's unclear to me that the random-number issue got sorted out?
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