Re: [PATCH] random: add blocking facility to urandom

Sasha Levin
2011-09-07T21:38:59Z

On Wed, 2011-09-07 at 17:28 -0400, Steve Grubb wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 07, 2011 05:10:27 PM Sasha Levin wrote:
> > > > > > Something similar probably happens for getting junk on disks before
> > > > > > creating an encrypted filesystem on top of them.
> > > > >
> > > > > During system install, this sysctl is not likely to be applied.
> > > >
> > > > It may happen at any time you need to create a new filesystem, which
> > > > won't necessarily happen during system install.
> > > >
> > > > See for example the instructions on how to set up a LUKS filesystem:
> > > > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System_Encryption_with_LUKS#Prepar
> > > > atio n_and_mapping
> > >
> > > Those instructions might need to be changed. That is one way of many to
> > > get random numbers on the disk. Anyone really needing the security to
> > > have the sysctl on will also probably accept that its doing its job and
> > > keeping the numbers random. Again, no effect unless you turn it on.
> >
> > There are bunch of other places that would need to be changed in that
> > case :)
> >
> > Why not implement it as a user mode CUSE driver that would
> > wrap /dev/urandom and make it behave any way you want to? why push it
> > into the kernel?
>
> For one, auditing does not work for FUSE or things like that. We have to be able to
> audit who is using what. Then there are the FIPS-140 requirements and this will spread
> it. There are problems sending crypto audit events from user space, too.

auditd doesn't work with FUSE? afaik it should, FUSE is a filesystem
like any other.

--

Sasha.