[systemd-devel] Delaying (SSH) key generation until the urandom pool is initialized

[Reindl Harald]

Am 06.06.2014 11:50, schrieb Florian Weimer:
> On 05/05/2014 04:35 PM, Lennart Poettering wrote:
>> Hmm? Well, a virtualized OS has to trust the hypervisor, there's no way
>> around that.
> 
> I'm referring to this:
> 
>  * This function will use the architecture-specific hardware random
>  * number generator if it is available.  The arch-specific hw RNG will
>  * almost certainly be faster than what we can do in software, but it
>  * is impossible to verify that it is implemented securely (as
>  * opposed, to, say, the AES encryption of a sequence number using a
>  * key known by the NSA).  So it's useful if we need the speed, but
>  * only if we're willing to trust the hardware manufacturer not to
>  * have put in a back door.
> 
> I think this is the reason why the pool isn't considered initialized even if its contents has been randomized with
> RDRAND or similar instructions.
> 
> I wouldn't be surprised if these minds have a similar concern about randomness coming from a hypervisor

if you don't trust the underlying hardware and hypervisor you
are lost in any case, that's a battle you can't win and in
that context the random numbers are your smallest problem
at all

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