[nycbug-talk] FreeBSD abandoning hardware randomness

[Brian Callahan]

On 12/11/2013 12:06 PM, Isaac (.ike) Levy wrote:
>
> 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..."

Humans are also very predictable devices... maybe we can create a RNG 
for our brains? :) We'd probably make a killing from venture capitalists...

> 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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