3 ms·
> The OpenBSD folks also appear to trust RDRANG, which would help not blocking. But I disagree with that trust decision. Mixing more data into a random source
by ori_b 7y ago
> The OpenBSD folks also appear to trust RDRANG, which would help not blocking. But I disagree with that trust decision.
Mixing more data into a random source cannot make it worse. OpenBSD does not use rdrand alone.
- nitrogen 7y agoThis is unlikely, but wouldn't it be conceivable that a malicious hardware "RNG" that lives in the CPU and has access to the internal state of the OS RNG (and knows common OS algorithms) could always supply the worst possible value to counteract whatever is in the pool?
- ori_b 7y agoYeah, but you don't need to use rdrand in that scenario -- the cpu could also just tamper with the pool at will, regardless of the RDRAND instruction.
- lifthrasiir 7y agodjb has noted that RDRAND is a particularly attractable means to exfiltration back in 2014 [1]. So it is not simply irrelevant. [1] https://blog.cr.yp.to/20140205-entropy.html https://blog.cr.yp.to/20140205-entropy.html