By: Gionatan Danti (g.danti.delete@this.assyoma.it), August 11, 2019 1:35 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Linus Torvalds (torvalds.delete@this.linux-foundation.org) on August 10, 2019 4:15 pm wrote:
> the kernel. We do use rdrand, but not generally in a long loop, and we don't trust the result implicitly
> (so it gets used to initialize entropy data, and a completely broken rdrand does possibly weaken
> random data generation, but since we also have other sources of entropy, you're generally going
> to have a hard time really notice broken rdrand for the kernel (famous last words).
>
> Don't use broken CPU's and trust the resulting keys regardless. The kernel is bring pretty careful, but not
> all tools necessarily are.
I was under the impression that kernel can be configured to trust RDRAND: https://lwn.net/Articles/760584/
Am I missing something?
> the kernel. We do use rdrand, but not generally in a long loop, and we don't trust the result implicitly
> (so it gets used to initialize entropy data, and a completely broken rdrand does possibly weaken
> random data generation, but since we also have other sources of entropy, you're generally going
> to have a hard time really notice broken rdrand for the kernel (famous last words).
>
> Don't use broken CPU's and trust the resulting keys regardless. The kernel is bring pretty careful, but not
> all tools necessarily are.
I was under the impression that kernel can be configured to trust RDRAND: https://lwn.net/Articles/760584/
Am I missing something?
