Re: TPMs and random numbers

From: Andy Lutomirski
Date: Wed Sep 11 2013 - 15:08:50 EST


On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 12:06 PM, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 2:45 PM, Theodore Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> We should definitely do this. If the TPM driver could fetch some
>> randomness and then call add_device_randomness() to feed this into the
>> random driver's entropy pool when it initializes itself, that would be
>> ***really*** cool.
>
>
> rngd already does this.

And all those random numbers generated before rngd starts are quite
possibly crap.

I think that rngd makes sense as a tool to access strange sources of
entropy and to periodically reseed the pool, but I also think that the
kernel should really be pulling in easily available entropy on its own
at startup.

--Andy
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