From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
To: Greg Price <price@MIT.EDU>
Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@MIT.EDU>,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/11] random: code cleanups
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 20:51:18 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <52830546.8010002@zytor.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20131113043702.GZ8043@ringworld.MIT.EDU>
On 11/12/2013 08:37 PM, Greg Price wrote:
>
> I'm thinking only of boot-time blocking. The idea is that once
> /dev/urandom is seeded with, say, 128 bits of min-entropy in the
> absolute, information-theoretic sense, it can produce an infinite
> supply (or something like 2^128 bits, which amounts to the same thing)
> of bits that can't be distinguished from random, short of breaking or
> brute-forcing the crypto. So once it's seeded, it's good forever.
>
And, pray tell, how will you know that you have done that?
Even the best entropy estimation algorithms are nothing but estimations,
and min-entropy is the hardest form of entropy to estimate.
-hpa
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2013-11-13 4:51 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 22+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2013-11-07 23:57 [PATCH 00/11] random: code cleanups Greg Price
2013-11-07 23:57 ` [PATCH 01/11] random: fix typos / spelling errors in comments Greg Price
2013-11-07 23:58 ` [PATCH 02/11] random: fix comment on proc_do_uuid Greg Price
2013-11-07 23:58 ` [PATCH 03/11] random: fix description of get_random_bytes Greg Price
2013-11-07 23:58 ` [PATCH 04/11] random: simplify loop in random_read Greg Price
2013-11-07 23:58 ` [PATCH 05/11] random: declare trickle_count unsigned Greg Price
2013-11-07 23:58 ` [PATCH 06/11] random: fix comment on "account" Greg Price
2013-11-07 23:58 ` [PATCH 07/11] random: simplify accounting code slightly Greg Price
2013-11-07 23:59 ` [PATCH 08/11] random: simplify accounting logic Greg Price
2013-11-07 23:59 ` [PATCH 09/11] random: forget lock in lockless accounting Greg Price
2013-11-07 23:59 ` [PATCH 10/11] random: pull 'min' check in accounting to inside lockless update Greg Price
2013-11-07 23:59 ` [PATCH 11/11] random: simplify accounting code Greg Price
2013-11-12 4:24 ` [PATCH 00/11] random: code cleanups Theodore Ts'o
2013-11-12 22:40 ` Greg Price
2013-11-13 3:32 ` Theodore Ts'o
2013-11-13 4:02 ` H. Peter Anvin
2013-11-13 4:37 ` Greg Price
2013-11-13 4:51 ` H. Peter Anvin [this message]
2013-11-13 6:06 ` Greg Price
2013-11-13 4:23 ` Greg Price
2013-11-13 6:08 ` Theodore Ts'o
2013-11-13 6:28 ` Greg Price
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