[nycbug-talk] FreeBSD abandoning hardware randomness

[Isaac (.ike) Levy]

On December 11, 2013 11:05:13 AM EST, "Isaac (.ike) Levy" 
<ike at blackskyresearch.net> wrote:

>
> Correction,
>
> On December 11, 2013 09:37:59 AM EST, "Isaac (.ike) Levy" 
> <ike at blackskyresearch.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> On December 10, 2013 09:12:40 PM EST, James E Keenan 
>> <jkeen at verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Article here:
>>>
>>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/09/freebsd_abandoning_hardware_randomness/
>>
>> This made the rounds in ARS yesterday too,
>> http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/we-cannot-trust-intel-and-vias-chip-based-crypto-freebsd-developers-say/
>>
>> --
>> While it's all on our mind, here's an excellent old article 
>> detailing random facilities, focused on practical use of OpenBSD and 
>> FreeBSD,
>> https://calomel.org/entropy_random_number_generators.html
>
> It was pointed out to me on that the calomel articles are not known 
> for their correctness, which piques my curiosity:
>
> Can anyone point at solid practical documentation for using, 
> sourcing, and validating various random subsystems on *BSD/UNIX 
> systems?

bcallah pointed out this gem:

" * Computers are very predictable devices..."
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/rnd.c?rev=1.147;content-type=text%2Fplain

Now, why that's not in a man page, (or is it?), is beyond me.

Best,
.ike


>
> Best,
> .ike
>
>
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