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authorTheodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>2012-07-05 10:35:23 -0400
committerTheodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>2012-07-14 20:17:47 -0400
commitc2557a303ab6712bb6e09447df828c557c710ac9 (patch)
tree6459a604fa95e7cabdf78a30b1a5fa203e3252bb /drivers/rtc
parente6d4947b12e8ad947add1032dd754803c6004824 (diff)
random: add new get_random_bytes_arch() function
Create a new function, get_random_bytes_arch() which will use the architecture-specific hardware random number generator if it is present. Change get_random_bytes() to not use the HW RNG, even if it is avaiable. The reason for this is that the hw random number generator is fast (if it is present), but it requires that we trust the hardware manufacturer to have not put in a back door. (For example, an increasing counter encrypted by an AES key known to the NSA.) It's unlikely that Intel (for example) was paid off by the US Government to do this, but it's impossible for them to prove otherwise --- especially since Bull Mountain is documented to use AES as a whitener. Hence, the output of an evil, trojan-horse version of RDRAND is statistically indistinguishable from an RDRAND implemented to the specifications claimed by Intel. Short of using a tunnelling electronic microscope to reverse engineer an Ivy Bridge chip and disassembling and analyzing the CPU microcode, there's no way for us to tell for sure. Since users of get_random_bytes() in the Linux kernel need to be able to support hardware systems where the HW RNG is not present, most time-sensitive users of this interface have already created their own cryptographic RNG interface which uses get_random_bytes() as a seed. So it's much better to use the HW RNG to improve the existing random number generator, by mixing in any entropy returned by the HW RNG into /dev/random's entropy pool, but to always _use_ /dev/random's entropy pool. This way we get almost of the benefits of the HW RNG without any potential liabilities. The only benefits we forgo is the speed/performance enhancements --- and generic kernel code can't depend on depend on get_random_bytes() having the speed of a HW RNG anyway. For those places that really want access to the arch-specific HW RNG, if it is available, we provide get_random_bytes_arch(). Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu> Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Diffstat (limited to 'drivers/rtc')
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