Question - seeding the hw pseudo random number generator

Krzysztof Kozlowski
2017-03-20T18:24:01Z

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 09:28:58PM +0800, Herbert Xu wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 12:19:32PM +0530, PrasannaKumar Muralidharan wrote:
> >
> > AF_ALG interface for rng does have seeding support. I think hw_random
> > does not provide seeding support intentionally as I understand that
> > True RNG need not require seeding (please correct me if I am wrong).
>
> Yes. We should be converting PRNGs in hwrng over to algif_rng.

The actual hardware block can be seeded from true RNG (taking data
from thermal noise) so the solutions (if I understand correctly) for
exynos-rng might be:
1. Seed from internal TRNG making it a proper hwrandom device,
2. Convert to AF_ALG and seed with data from user-space through that
interface.

Thanks for explanation, I'll queue it to my tasks list.

Best regards,
Krzysztof