Re: [PATCH v5 0/7] /dev/random - a new approach

Stephan Mueller
2016-06-21T07:32:23Z

Am Dienstag, 21. Juni 2016, 09:12:07 schrieb Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos:

Hi Nikos,

> On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Stephan Mueller <smueller@chronox.de>
wrote:
> >> Personally, I don't really use /dev/random, nor would I recommend it
> >> for most application programmers. At this point, getrandom(2) really
> >> is the preferred interface unless you have some very specialized
> >> needs.
> >
> > I fully agree. But there are use cases for /dev/random, notably as a seed
> > source for other DRNG.
>
> Is that really the case? I believe all DRNG's use /dev/urandom anyway
> for seeding since they cannot afford indeterminate blocking. It would
> be a gain for everyone if /dev/random was the same as /dev/urandom in
> Linux.

For standard approaches, this is true. But there are regulations, notably in
the German realm, /dev/random shall be used, at least partially (see AIS
20/31).

Ciao
Stephan