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From: "Jason A. Donenfeld" <Jason@zx2c4.com>
To: Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org>
Cc: linux-efi@vger.kernel.org, linux-crypto@vger.kernel.org,
	patches@lists.linux.dev, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	ardb@kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 2/5] efi: stub: use random seed from EFI variable
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2022 02:12:38 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <Y4QLBnoJGUoqwo4p@zx2c4.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20221127211244.GB32253@srcf.ucam.org>

Hi,

On Sun, Nov 27, 2022 at 09:12:44PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 03:04:01AM +0100, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> 
> > +		 * We delete the seed here, and /hope/ that this causes EFI to
> > +		 * also zero out its representation on disk. This is somewhat
> 
> Several implementations I've worked with simply append a deletion marker 
> or append a new variable value until the variable store fills up 
> entirely, at which point a garbage collection event is either run or 
> scheduled for the next reboot. The spec doesn't define how this is 
> handled so unfortunately I don't think there's any way to get a pony 
> here.

Yea this is a bummer. During my first attempt at this, I actually
overwrote the whole thing with zeros and then deleted it. But Ard
pointed out that this doesn't make a difference anyway. But, as it turns
out, that's more or less the same thing that happens with seed files on
SSDs (nobody calls fstrim after overwriting a seed file). So at the very
least, it's no worse?

Jason

  reply	other threads:[~2022-11-28  1:12 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-11-22  2:03 [PATCH v3 0/5] Use EFI variables for random seed Jason A. Donenfeld
2022-11-22  2:04 ` [PATCH v3 1/5] efi: vars: prohibit reading random seed variables Jason A. Donenfeld
2022-11-27 21:00   ` Matthew Garrett
2022-11-28  1:10     ` Jason A. Donenfeld
2022-11-22  2:04 ` [PATCH v3 2/5] efi: stub: use random seed from EFI variable Jason A. Donenfeld
2022-11-27 21:12   ` Matthew Garrett
2022-11-28  1:12     ` Jason A. Donenfeld [this message]
2022-11-28  1:35       ` Matthew Garrett
2022-11-22  2:04 ` [PATCH v3 3/5] random: add back async readiness notifier Jason A. Donenfeld
2022-11-22  2:04 ` [PATCH v3 4/5] vsprintf: initialize siphash key using notifier Jason A. Donenfeld
2022-11-22  2:04 ` [PATCH v3 5/5] efi: random: refresh non-volatile random seed when RNG is initialized Jason A. Donenfeld

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